The Very Best of R.K. Narayan_clone

twisted her up too much and she could not stand upright again for days. I sat gazing as if I were seeing it for the first time. There came to my mind my mother’s remark on the first day, ‘A serpent girl! Be careful.’ I felt sad at the thought of my mother. How much she could have enjoyed watching this. What would she have said if she could have seen Rosie now, in her shining costume and diadem? I felt a regret at the rift that had developed between me and my mother. She occasionally wrote me a postcard, and I sent her small sums of money now and then, dashing off a few lines to say I was well. She often asked when I’d get back the house for her—well, that involved a big sum and I told myself I’d attend to it as soon as I had some time. Anyway, what was the hurry? She was quite happy in the village; that brother of hers looked after her very well. Somehow I could never fully forgive her for her treatment of Rosie on that fateful day. Well, we were now on cordial terms, but far away from each other, the best possible arrangement. I was watching Nalini and at the same time thinking of my mother. At this moment, one of the men of the organization came up to me unobtrusively and said, ‘You are wanted, sir.’ ‘Who wants me?’ ‘The District Superintendent of Police.’ ‘Tell him I’ll be with him as soon as this act is over.’ He went away. The District Superintendent! He was one of my card-playing mates. What did he want to see me about now? Of course, the officials were all here, expecting the minister (a sofa was kept vacant for him), and extra police were posted to control the crowd and the traffic. After this act, when the curtain came down, thunderous applause broke out, and I went out. Yes, the District Superintendent was there. He was in plain dress. ‘Hello, Superintendent, I didn’t know you were coming; you could have come with us in the car,’ I cried. He plucked my sleeve and drew me aside because there were too many people watching us. We went to a lonely spot under a lamp outside, and he whispered, ‘I’m awfully sorry to say this, but I’ve a warrant for your arrest. It has come from headquarters.’ I smiled awkwardly, partly disbelieving him. I thought he was joking. He pulled out a paper. Yes, it was a true and good warrant for my arrest on a complaint from Marco, the charge being forgery. When I stood ruminating, the Superintendent asked, ‘Did you sign any recent document for—the lady?’ ‘Yes; she was busy. But how can you call that forgery?’ ‘Did you write “For” or just write her name?’ He plied me with questions. ‘It’s a serious charge,’ he said. ‘I hope you will pull through, but for the moment I have to take you in custody.’

I realized the gravity of the situation. I whispered, ‘Please don’t create a scene now. Wait until the end of the show, and till we are back home.’ ‘I’ll have to be with you in the car, and after the warrant is served you can arrange for a surety bond till the case is taken up. That will leave you free, but first I’m afraid you will have to go with me to the magistrate. He has to sanction it. I have no powers.’ I went back to my sofa in the hall. They brought me my garland. Somebody got up and made a speech thanking the dancer and Mr Raju for their help in getting the collection to over seventy thousand rupees. Incidentally he spun out a lot of verbiage around the theme of the dance in India, its status, philosophy, and purpose. He went on and on. He was a much-respected president of the local high school or some such thing. There was tremendous applause at the end of his speech. More speeches followed. I felt numb, hardly hearing anything. I didn’t care what they said. I didn’t care whether the speech was long or short. When it was over, I went to Nalini’s dressing-room. I found her changing. A number of girls were standing around her, some waiting for autographs, and some just looking on. I said to Nalini, ‘We will have to hurry.’ I went back to the Superintendent in the corridor, composing my looks, trying to look cheerful and unconcerned. A lot of the first-row men surrounded me to explain their appreciation in minute detail. ‘She just towers above all others,’ someone said. ‘I have seen dancers for a half-century—I’m the sort of man who will forgo a meal and walk twenty miles to see a dance. But never have I seen,’ etc. etc. ‘This maternity home, you know, will be the first of its kind. We must have a wing named after Miss Nalini. I hope you will be able to come again. We would like to have you both for the opening ceremony. Could you give us a photograph of her…? We’d like to enlarge it and hang it in the hall… That’ll be source of inspiration for many others, and, who knows, in this very building may be born a genius who may follow the footsteps of your distinguished wife.’ I didn’t care what they said. I simply nodded and grunted till Nalini came out. I knew that the men surrounded and talked to me only in the hope of getting a close view of Nalini. As usual, she had her garland; I gave her mine. The Superintendent led the way unobtrusively to our Plymouth waiting outside. We had to walk through a crowd buzzing around us like flies. The driver held the door open. ‘Get in. Get in,’ I said impatiently to Nalini. I sat beside her. Her face was partially illuminated by a shaft of gaslight from a lamp hanging on a tree. Thick dust hung in the air, churned up by the traffic; all the vehicles, cars, bullock- carts, and jutkas were leaving in a mass, with a deafening honking of horns and

rattle of wheels. A few policemen stood at a discreet distance and saluted the Superintendent as our car moved away. He occupied the front seat next to the driver. I told her, ‘Our friend, the District Superintendent, is coming back with us to the city.’ It was about two hours’ journey. She talked for a while about the evening. I gave her some comments on her performance. I told her something of what I had heard people say about her snake-dance. She said, ‘You are never tired of it,’ and then lapsed into silence and drowsiness, only waiting for our destination, as our car whizzed along the country highway, past long rows of bullock-carts with their jingling bells. ‘They sound like your anklets,’ I whispered to her clumsily. The moment we reached our home, she threw a smile at the Superintendent, murmured ‘Good night’, and vanished into the house. The Superintendent said to me, ‘Let us go now in my jeep.’ It was waiting at the gate. I sent away the Plymouth. I said, ‘I say, Superintendent, give me a little time, please. I want to tell her about it.’ ‘All right. Don’t delay. We must not get into trouble.’ I went up the staircase. He followed. He stood on the landing while I went into her room. She listened to me as if I were addressing a stone pillar. Even now I can recollect her bewildered, stunned expression as she tried to comprehend the situation. I thought she would break down. She often broke down on small issues, but this seemed to leave her unperturbed. She merely said, ‘I felt all along you were not doing right things. This is karma. What can we do?’ She came out to the landing and asked the officer, ‘What shall we do about it, sir? Is there no way out?’ ‘At the moment I have no discretion, madam. It’s a non-bailable warrant. But perhaps tomorrow you may apply for reconsideration of bond. But we can do nothing till tomorrow, till it’s moved before the magistrate.’ He was no longer my friend, but a frightful technician. 10 I had to spend a couple of days in the lock-up, among low criminals. The District Superintendent ceased to be friendly the moment we were in the Central Police Station. He just abandoned me to the routine care of the station officer. Rosie came to see me in the police lock-up and wept. I sat for the first time with my eyes averted, in the farthest corner of the cell. After a while I recovered my composure and told her to go and see our banker. All that she asked was, ‘Oh, we had so much money! Where is it all gone?’ I went back home three days later, but the old, normal life was gone. Mani

worked in a mechanical manner, with bowed head, in his own room. There was no work for him to do. Fewer letters arrived for me. There was a sepulchral quietness about the house. Nalini’s feet were silent upstairs. No visitors came. She had had to scrape up a bail bond for ten thousand rupees. If I had lived as a normal man of common sense, it would not have been difficult to find the amount. As it was, I had tied up whatever was left over in several foolish share certificates, on which the banks would not advance any money, and the rest I had spent in show living, including the advances taken for future engagements. I suggested to Rosie, ‘Why don’t you go through with your engagements for the next quarter? We should receive the balance of the fees.’ I caught her at dinner, because nowadays I spent all my time downstairs and left her alone. I lacked the confidence to face her alone in her room. I even spent my sleeping hours on the hall sofa. She did not answer. I repeated my question, at which she muttered, when the cook went in to fetch something, ‘Must we discuss it before the cook?’ I accepted the snub meekly. I was now a sort of hanger-on in the house; ever since she had released me from police custody, the mastery had passed to her I fretted inwardly at the thought of it. When the first shock of the affair had subsided, she became hardened. She never spoke to me except as to a tramp she had salvaged. It could not be helped. She had had to scrape together all her resources to help me. She went through her act of help m a sort of cold, businesslike manner. I ate my food in silence. She deigned to spend some time in the hall after food. She came and sat down there. She had a tray of betel leaves by her side on the sofa. I pushed it off and dared to seat myself by her side. Her lips were reddened with betel juice. Her face was flushed with the tingling effect of betel leaves. She looked at me imperiously and asked, ‘Now, what is it?’ Before I opened my mouth she added, ‘Remember, you should speak nothing before the cook. The servants are gossiping too much. On the first of the month I’m going to send one of them away.’ ‘Wait, wait. Don’t rush,’ I began. ‘What should I wait for?’ Her eyes glistened with tears; she blew her nose. I could do nothing about it but just watch. After all the mastery had passed to her and if she thought fit to cry, it was her business. She had enough strength in her to overcome it if she thought it necessary. It was I who needed comforting. I was overwhelmed with a sudden self-pity. Why should she cry? She was not on the threshold of a prison. She had not been the one who had run hither and thither creating glamour and a public for a dancer; it was not she who had been fiendishly trapped by a half-forgotten man like Marco—an apparent gazer at

cave-paintings, but actually venomous and vindictive, like the cobra lying in wait for its victim. I can now see that it was a very wrong line of thought to adopt. But how could I help it? It was only such perverse lines of thought and my excessive self-pity that enabled me to survive those moments; one needed all that amount of devilry to keep oneself afloat. I could give no time for others. I could not bother to think of her own troubles, of the mess she had been led into, of the financial emptiness after all those months of dancing and working, of the surprise sprung upon her by my lack of—what should we call it, judgement? No, it was something much lower than that. Lack of ordinary character! I see it all now clearly, but at that time I still clung to my own grievances, and could watch without much perturbation her emotional tantrums. I allowed her to have her cry as usual. She wiped her eyes and asked, ‘You said something when we were eating?’ ‘Yes; but you wouldn’t let me proceed,’ I said petulantly. ‘I was asking why you should not go through with the programmes, at least those for which we have received an advance.’ She remained in thought for a while and said, ‘Why should I?’ ‘Because we received only an advance, while what we desperately need is the full fee in every case.’ ‘Where is all the money?’ ‘You should know. The account is all in your name, and you may see the bankbook if you like.’ It was a cruel thing to say. Some devil was wagging his tongue within my skull. I was suddenly racked with the feeling that after all I had done for her she was not sufficiently sympathetic to my cause. She spurned continuing this perverse discussion. She merely said, ‘Please tell me what those engagements are and I’ll return them all their money.’ I knew that this was just a brave statement. Where would she find the amount to refund? ‘Why should you? Why should you not go through with them?’ ‘Is money your only consideration? Don’t you see how I can’t face the public again?’ ‘Why not? If I’m under arrest, I’m under arrest; that is all. Not you. Why should you not go about your business normally?’ ‘I can’t; that is all. I can say nothing more.’ I asked coldly, ‘What do you propose to do in future?’ ‘Perhaps I’ll go back to him.’ ‘Do you think he will take you back?’ ‘Yes, if I stop dancing.’ I laughed in a sinister manner. ‘Why do you laugh?’ she asked.

‘If it were only the question of dancing, he might.’ Why did I talk like this? It hurt her very much. ‘Yes; you are in a position to say such a thing now. He may not admit me over the threshold, in which event it is far better to end one’s life, on his doorstep.’ She remained moody for a while. It gave me a profound satisfaction to see her imperiousness shattered after all. She added, ‘I think the best solution for all concerned would be to be done with this business of living. I mean both of us. A dozen sleeping pills in a glass of milk, or two glasses of milk. One often hears of suicide pacts. It seems to me a wonderful solution, like going on a long holiday. We could sit and talk one night perhaps, and sip our glasses of milk, and maybe we should wake up in a trouble- free world. I’d propose it this very minute if I were sure you would keep the pact, but I fear that I may go ahead and you may change your mind at the last second.’ ‘And have the responsibility of disposing of your body?’ I said, which was the worst thing I could have said. Why was I speaking like this again and again? I think I was piqued that she would not continue her dancing, was a free creature, while I was a jailbird. I said, ‘Is it not better to keep dancing than think these morbid thoughts?’ I felt I must take charge of her again. ‘Why won’t you dance? Is it because you think I won’t be there to look after you? I’m sure you can manage. And it may after all be only for a short time. Oh, there is nothing in this case of ours. It’ll just break down at the first hearing. You take my word for it. It’s a false charge.’ ‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘How can they prove anything against me?’ She merely ignored this legal rambling and said, ‘Even if you are free, I’ll not dance in public any more. I am tired of all this circus existence.’ ‘It was your own choice,’ I said. ‘Not the circus life. I visualized it as something different. It’s all gone with that old home of yours!’ ‘Oh!’ I groaned. ‘And you wouldn’t let me rest then. You drove me hard to help you come before the public, and now you say this! I don’t know, I don’t know, you are very difficult to satisfy.’ ‘You don’t understand!’ she cried, and got up and went upstairs. She came down a few steps to say, ‘It does not mean I’m not going to help. If I have to pawn my last possession, I’ll do it to save you from jail. But once it’s over, leave me once and for all; that’s all I ask. Forget me. Leave me to live or die, as I choose; that’s all.’

She was as good as her word. A sudden activity seized her. She ran about with Mani’s help. She sold her diamonds. She gathered all the cash she could, selling all the shares under par. She kept Mani spinning around. She sent him to Madras to pick up a big lawyer for me. When the stress for cash became acute and she found we would have a lot to make up, she became somewhat more practical- minded. She swallowed her own words and went through her engagements, shepherding the musicians herself, with Mani’s help, making all the railway arrangements, and so forth. I taunted her as I saw her moving around. ‘You see, this is what I wanted you to do.’ There was no dearth of engagements. In fact, my present plight, after a temporary lull, seemed to create an extra interest. After all, people wanted to enjoy a show, and how could they care what happened to me? It hurt me to see her go through her work, practice, and engagements unconcernedly. Mani was very helpful to her, and those who invited her gave her all assistance. Everything went to prove that she could get on excellently without me. I felt like telling Mani, ‘Be careful. She’ll lead you on before you know where you are, and then you will find yourself in my shoes all of a sudden! Beware the snake-woman!’ I knew my mind was not working either normally or fairly. I knew I was growing jealous of her self-reliance. But I forgot for the moment that she was doing it all for my sake. I feared that, in spite of her protestations to the contrary, she would never stop dancing. She would not be able to stop. She would go from strength to strength. I knew, looking at the way she was going about her business, that she would manage—whether I was inside the bars or outside, whether her husband approved of it or not. Neither Marco nor I had any place in her life, which had its own sustaining vitality and which she herself had underestimated all along. Our lawyer had his own star value. His name spelled magic in all the court-halls of this part of the country. He had saved many a neck (sometimes more than once) from the noose; he had absolved many a public swindler in the public eye and in the eye of the law; he could prove a whole gang of lawless hooligans to be innocent victims of a police conspiracy. He set at naught all the laboriously built-up cases of the prosecution; he made their story laughable; he picked the most carefully packed evidence between his thumb and forefinger and with a squeeze reduced it to thin air; he was old-fashioned in appearance, with his long coat and an orthodox-style dhoti and turban and over it all his black gown. His eyes scintillated with mirth and confidence when he stood at the bar and addressed the court. When the judge’s eyes were lowered over the papers on his

desk, he inhaled a deep pinch of snuff with the utmost elegance. We feared at one stage that he might refuse to take our case, considering it too slight for his attention; but fortunately he undertook it as a concession from one star to another—for Nalini’s sake. When the news came that he had accepted the brief (a thousand rupees it cost us to get this out of him), we felt as if the whole case against me had been dropped by the police with apologies for the inconvenience caused. But he was expensive—each consultation had to be bought for cash at the counter. He was in his own way an ‘adjournment lawyer’. A case in his hands was like dough; he could knead and draw it up and down. He split a case into minute bits and demanded as many days for microscopic examination. He would keep the court fidgeting without being able to rise for lunch, because he could talk without completing a sentence; he had a knack of telescoping sentence into sentence without pausing for breath. He arrived by the morning train and left by the evening one, and until that time he neither moved off the court floor nor let the case progress even an inch for the day—so that a judge had to wonder how the day had spent itself. Thus he prolonged the lease of freedom for a criminal within the available time, whatever might be the final outcome. But this meant also for the poor case-stricken man more expense, as his charges per day were seven hundred and fifty rupees, and he had to be paid railway and other expenses as well, and he never came without juniors to assist him. He presented my case as a sort of comedy in three acts, in which the chief villain was Marco, an enemy of civilized existence. Marco was the first prosecution witness for the day, and I could see him across the hall wincing at every assault mounted against him by my star lawyer. He must have wished that he had not been foolhardy enough to press charges. He had his own lawyer, of course, but he looked puny and frightened. The first part of the comedy was that the villain wanted to drive his wife mad; the second part of the comedy was that the wife survived this onslaught, and on the point of privation and death was saved by a humble humanitarian called Raju, who sacrificed his time and profession for the protection of the lady and enabled her to rise so high in the world of the arts. Her life was a contribution to the prestige of our nation and our cultural traditions. When the whole world was thirsting for Bharat Natyam, here was this man slighting it, and when she made a big name for herself, someone’s gorge rose. Someone wanted to devise a way of blowing up this whole edifice of a helpless lady’s single- handed upward career, Your Honour. And then the schemer brought out the

document—a document which had been forgotten and lain in concealment for so many years. There was some other motive in involving the lady by getting her to sign the document—he would go into it at a later part of the argument. (It was his favourite device to make something look sinister; he never found the opportunity to return to it later.) Why should anyone want to trot out a document which had been kept back for all those years? Why did he leave it alone so long? Our lawyer would leave the point for the present without a comment. He looked about like a hound scenting a fox. The document, Your Honour, was returned without signature. The idea was not to get involved, and the lady was not the type to get caught by jewellery; she cared little for it. And so the document was unsigned and returned, the good man Raju himself carrying it to the post office in order to make sure of its dispatch, as the postmaster would testify. So it was a big disappointment for the schemer when the document went back unsigned. So they thought of another trick: someone copied the lady’s signature on it and took it to the police. It was not his business to indicate who could have done it; he was not interested in the question. He was only interested to the extent of saying categorically that it was not his client who had done it; and unhesitatingly he would recommend that he should be immediately discharged and exonerated. But the prosecution case was strong, though unspectacular. They put Mani in the box and examined him till he blurted out that I was desperately looking for an insured parcel every day; the postmaster was cross-examined and had to admit that I had seemed unusual, and finally it was the handwriting expert who testified that it could reasonably be taken to be my handwriting: he had detailed proofs from my writings on the backs of cheques, on receipts and letters. The judge sentenced me to two years’ imprisonment. Our star lawyer looked gratified, I should properly have got seven years according to law books, but his fluency knocked five years off, though, if I had been a little careful… The star lawyer did not achieve this end all at once, but over a period of many months, while Nalini worked harder than ever to keep the lawyer as well as our household going. I was considered a model prisoner. Now I realized that people generally thought of me as being unsound and worthless, not because I deserved the label, but because they had been seeing me in the wrong place all along. To appreciate me, they should really have come to the Central Jail and watched me. No doubt my movements were somewhat restricted: I had to get out of bed at an hour when I’d rather stay in, and turn in when I’d rather stay out—that was morning five and evening five. But in between these hours I was the master of the show. I

visited all departments of the prison as a sort of benevolent supervisor. I got on well with all the warders: I relieved them in their jobs when other prisoners had to be watched. I watched the weaving section and the carpentry sheds. Whether they were murderers or cut-throats or highwaymen, they all listened to me, and I could talk them out of their blackest moods. When there was a respite, I told them stories and philosophies and what not. They came to refer to me as Vadhyar—that is, Teacher. There were five hundred prisoners in that building and I could claim to have established a fairly widespread intimacy with most of them. I got on well with the officials too. When the jail superintendent went about his inspections, I was one of those privileged to walk behind and listen to his remarks; and I ran little errands for him, which endeared me to him. He had only to look ever so slightly to his left, and I knew what he wanted. I dashed up and called the warder he was thinking of calling; he had only to hesitate for a second, and I knew he wanted that pebble on the road to be picked up and thrown away. It pleased him tremendously. In addition, I was in a position to run ahead and warn warders and other subordinates of his arrival; and that gave them time to rouse themselves from brief naps and straighten out their turbans. I worked incessantly on a vegetable patch in the back yard of the superintendent’s home. I dug the earth and drew water from the well and tended it carefully. I put fences round, with brambles and thorns so that cattle did not destroy the plants. I grew huge brinjals and beans, and cabbages. When they appeared on their stalks as tiny buds, I was filled with excitement. I watched them develop, acquire shape, change colour, shed the early parts. When the harvest was ready, I plucked them off their stalks tenderly, washed them, wiped them clean to a polish with the end of my jail jacket, arranged them artistically on a tray of woven bamboo (I had arranged to get one from the weaving shed), and carried them in ceremoniously. When he saw the highly polished brinjals, greens, and cabbages, the superintendent nearly hugged me for joy. He was a lover of vegetables. He was a lover of good food, wherever it came from. I loved every piece of this work, the blue sky and sunshine, and the shade of the house in which I sat and worked, the feel of cold water; it produced in me a luxurious sensation. Oh, it seemed to be so good to be alive and feeling all this; the smell of freshly turned earth filled me with the greatest delight. If this was prison life, why didn’t more people take to it? They thought of it with a shudder, as if it were a place where a man was branded, chained, and lashed from morning to night! Medieval notions! No place could be more agreeable; if you observed the rules you earned greater appreciation here than beyond the high walls. I got my food, I had my social life with the other inmates and the staff, I moved about freely within an area of fifty acres. Well, that’s a great deal of space when you

come to think of it; man generally manages with much less. ‘Forget the walls, and you will be happy,’ I told some of the newcomers, who became moody and sullen the first few days. I felt amused at the thought of the ignorant folk who were horrified at the idea of a jail. Maybe a man about to be hanged might not have the same view, nor one who had been insubordinate, or violent; but short of these, all others could be happy here. I felt choked with tears when I had to go out after two years, and I wished that we had not wasted all that money on our lawyer. I’d have been happy to stay in this prison permanently. The superintendent transferred me to his office as his personal servant. I took charge of his desk, filled his inkwells, cleaned his pens, mended his pencil, and waited outside his door to see that no one disturbed him while he worked. If he so much as thought of me, I went in and stood before him, I was so alert. He gave me file-boxes to carry to his outer office; I brought in the file-boxes that they gave back to his table. When he was away, the newspapers arrived. I took charge of them and glanced through their pages before taking them to him. I don’t think he ever minded; he really liked to read his paper in bed, after his lunch, in the process of snatching a siesta. I quietly glanced through the speeches of world statesmen, descriptions of the Five Year Plan, of ministers opening bridges or distributing prizes, nuclear explosions, and world crises. I gave them all a cursory look. But on Friday and Saturday I turned the last page of The Hindu with trembling fingers—and the last column in its top portion always displayed the same block, Nalini’s photograph, the name of the institution where she was performing, and the price of tickets. Now at this corner of south India, now there, next week in Ceylon, and another week in Bombay or Delhi. Her empire was expanding rather than shrinking. It filled me with gall that she should go on without me. Who sat now on that middle sofa? How could the performance start without my signal with the small finger? How could she know when to stop? She probably went on and on, while others just watched without the wit to stop her. I chuckled to myself at the thought of how she must have been missing her trains after every performance. I opened the pages of the paper only to study her engagements and to calculate how much she might be earning. Unless she wrote up her accounts with forethought, super-tax would swallow what she so laboriously piled up with all that twisting and writhing of her person! I would have suspected Mani of having stepped into my shoes, and that would have provided more gall for me to swallow, but for the fact that in the early months of my stay Mani came to see me on a visitor’s day. Mani was the only visitor I had in prison; all other friends and relatives seemed to have forgotten me. He came because he felt saddened by my career.

He wore a look of appropriate gloom and seriousness as he waited for me. But when I told him, ‘This is not a bad place. You should come here, if you can,’ he looked horrified and never saw me again. But in the thirty minutes he was with me he gave me all the news. Nalini had cleared out of the town bag and baggage. She had settled down at Madras and was looking after herself quite well. She had given Mani a gift of one thousand rupees on the day that she left. She had a hundred bouquets of garlands presented to her on the railway platform. What a huge crowd had gathered to see her off! Before her departure she had methodically drawn up a list of all our various debts and discharged them fully; she had all the furniture and other possessions at our house turned over to an auctioneer. Mani explained that the only article that she carried out of the house was the book—which she came upon when she broke open the drink cabinet and had all the drink thrown out. She found the book tucked away inside, picked it up, and took it away carefully. ‘That was my book. Why should she take it?’ I cried childishly. I added, ‘She seems to think it a mighty performance, I suppose…! Did it please him? Or did it have any useful effect?’ I asked devilishly. Mani said, ‘After the case, she got into the car and went home, and he got into his and went to the railway station: they didn’t meet.’ ‘I’m happy at least about this one thing,’ I said. ‘She had the self-respect not to try and fall at his feet again.’ Mani added before going away, ‘I saw your mother recently. She is keeping well in the village.’ At the court-hall my mother had been present. She had come on the last day of the hearing, thanks to our local ‘adjournment lawyer’, who was my link generally with her, as he continued to handle the tortuous and prolonged affair of half my house being pledged to the Sait. He had been excited beyond words at the arrival of the glamorous lawyer from Madras, whom we put up at the Taj in the best suite. Our little lawyer seemed to have been running around in excitement. He went to the extent of rushing to the village and fetching my mother—for what purpose he alone knew. For my mother was overcome with my plight as I stood in the dock; when Rosie approached her to say a few words in the corridor, her eyes flashed, ‘Now are you satisfied with what you have done to him?’ And the girl shrank away from her. This was reported to me by my mother herself, whom I approached during the court recess. My mother was standing in the doorway. She had never seen the inside of a court-hall, and was overwhelmed with a feeling of her own daring. She said to me, ‘What a shame you have brought on yourself and on all known to you! I used to think that the worst that could happen to you might be death, as when you had that pneumonia for weeks; but I

now wish that rather than survive and go through this…’ She could not complete her sentence; she broke down and went along the corridor and out before we assembled again to hear the judgement. 11 Raju’s narration concluded with the crowing of the cock. Velan had listened without moving a muscle, supporting his back against the ancient stone railing along the steps. Raju felt his throat smarting with the continuous talk all night. The village had not yet wakened to life. Velan yielded himself to a big yawn, and remained silent. Raju had mentioned without a single omission every detail from his birth to his emergence from the gates of the prison. He imagined that Velan would rise with disgust and swear, ‘And we took you for such a noble soul all along! If one like you does penance, it’ll drive off even the little rain that we may hope for. Begone, you, before we feel tempted to throw you out. You have fooled us.’ Raju waited for these words as if for words of reprieve. He looked on Velan’s silence with anxiety and suspense, as if he waited on a judge’s verdict again, a second time. The judge here seemed to be one of sterner cast than the one he had encountered in the court-hall. Velan kept still—so still that Raju feared that he had fallen asleep. Raju asked, ‘Now you have heard me fully?’ like a lawyer who has a misgiving that the judge has been wool gathering. ‘Yes, Swami.’ Raju was taken aback at still being addressed as ‘Swami’. ‘What do you think of it?’ Velan looked quite pained at having to answer such a question. ‘I don’t know why you tell me all this, Swami. It’s very kind of you to address at such length your humble servant.’ Every respectful word that this man employed pierced Raju like a shaft. ‘He will not leave me alone,’ Raju thought with resignation. ‘This man will finish me before I know where I am.’ After profound thought, the judge rose in his seat. ‘I’ll go back to the village to do my morning duties. I will come back later. And I’ll never speak a word of what I have heard to anyone.’ He dramatically thumped his chest. ‘It has gone down there, and there it will remain.’ With this, he made a deep obeisance, went down the steps and across the sandy river.

A wandering newspaper correspondent who had come to the village picked up the news. The government had sent a commission to inquire into the drought conditions and suggest remedies, and with it came a press correspondent. While wandering around he heard about the Swamiji, went to the temple across the river, and sent off a wire to his paper at Madras, which circulated in all the towns of India. ‘Holy man’s penance to end drought’, said the heading, and then a brief description followed. This was the starting point. Public interest was roused. The newspaper office was besieged for more news. They ordered the reporter to go back. He sent a second telegram to say ‘Fifth day of fast’. He described the scene: how the Swami came to the river’s edge, faced its source, stood knee-deep in the water from six to eight in the morning, muttering something between his lips, his eyes shut, his palms pressed together in a salute to the gods, presumably. It had been difficult enough to find knee-deep water, but the villagers had made an artificial basin in sand and, when it didn’t fill, fetched water from distant wells and filled it, so that the man had always knee-deep water to stand in. The holy man stood there for two hours, then walked up the steps slowly and lay down on a mat in the pillared hall of the temple, while his devotees kept fanning him continuously. He took notice of hardly anyone, though there was a big crowd around. He fasted totally. He lay down and shut his eyes in order that his penance might be successful. For that purpose he conserved all his energy. When he was not standing in the water, he was in deep meditation. The villagers had set aside all their normal avocations in order to be near this great soul all the time. When he slept they remained there, guarding him, and though there was a fair-sized crowd, it remained totally silent. But each day the crowd increased. In a week there was a permanent hum pervading the place. Children shouted and played about, women came carrying baskets filled with pots, firewood, and foodstuffs, and cooked the food for their men and children. There were small curls of smoke going up all along the river bank, on the opposite slope and on this bank also. It was studded with picnic groups, with the women’s bright-coloured sarees shining in the sun; men too had festive dress. Bullocks unyoked from their carts jingled their bells as they ate the straw under the trees. People swarmed around little water-holes. Raju saw them across his pillared hall whenever he opened his eyes. He knew what that smoke meant; he knew that the they were eating and enjoying themselves. He wondered what they might be eating— rice boiled with a pinch of saffron, melted ghee—and what were the vegetables? Probably none in this

drought. The sight tormented him. This was actually the fourth day of his fast. Fortunately on the first day he had concealed a little stale food, left over from the previous day, in an aluminium vessel behind a stone pillar in the innermost sanctum—some rice mixed with buttermilk, and a piece of vegetable thrown in. Fortunately, too, he was able on the first day to snatch a little privacy at the end of the day’s prayer and penance, late at night. The crowd had not been so heavy then. Velan had business at home and had gone, leaving two others to attend on the Swami. The Swami had been lying on the mat in the pillared hall, with the two villagers looking on and waving a huge palmyra fan at his face. He had felt weakened by his day’s fasting. He had suddenly told them, ‘Sleep, if you like; I’ll be back,’ and he rose in a businesslike manner and passed into his inner sanctum. ‘I don’t have to tell the fellows where I am going or why or how long I shall be gone out of sight.’ He felt indignant. He had lost all privacy. People all the time watching and staring, lynx-eyed, as if he were a thief! In the inner sanctum he briskly thrust his hand into a niche and pulled out his aluminium pot. He sat down behind the pedestal, swallowed his food in three or four large mouthfuls, making as little noise as possible. It was stale rice, dry and stiff and two days old; it tasted awful, but it appeased his hunger. He washed it down with water. He went to the back yard and rinsed his mouth noiselessly—he didn’t want to smell of food when he went back to his mat. Lying on his mat, he brooded. He felt sick of the whole thing. When the assembly was at its thickest, could he not stand up on a high pedestal and cry, ‘Get out, all of you, and leave me alone, I am not the man to save you. No power on earth can save you if you are doomed. Why do you bother me with all this fasting and austerity?’ It would not help. They might enjoy it as a joke. He had his back to the wall, there was no further retreat. This realization helped him to get through the trial with a little more resignation on the second day of his penance. Once again he stood up in water, muttering with his face to the hills, and watching the picnic groups enjoying themselves all over the place. At night he left Velan for a while and sneaked in to look for leftover food in his aluminium vessel—it was really an act of desperation. He knew full well that he had finished off the vessel the previous night. Still he hoped, childishly, for a miracle. ‘When they want me to perform all sorts of miracles, why not make a start with my own aluminium vessel?’ he reflected caustically. He felt weak. He was enraged at the emptiness of his larder. He wondered for a moment if he could make a last desperate appeal to Velan to let him eat—and if only he minded, how he could save him! Velan ought to know, yet the fool would not stop thinking that he was a saviour. He

banged down the aluminium vessel in irritation and went back to his mat. What if the vessel did get shattered? It was not going to be of any use. What was the point of pampering an empty vessel? When he was seated, Velan asked respectfully, ‘What was that noise, master?’ ‘An empty vessel. Have you not heard the saying, “An empty vessel makes much noise”?’ Velan permitted himself a polite laugh and declared with admiration, ‘How many good sentiments and philosophies you have gathered in that head of yours, sir!’ Raju almost glared at him. This single man was responsible for his present plight. Why would he not go away and leave him alone? What a wise plan it would have been if the crocodile had got him while he crossed the river! But that poor old thing, which had remained almost a myth, had become dehydrated. When its belly was ripped open they found in it ten thousand rupees’ worth of jewellery. Did this mean that the crocodile had been in the habit of eating only women? No, a few snuffboxes and earrings of men were also found. The question of the day was: who was entitled to all this treasure? The villagers hushed up the affair. They did not want the government to get scent of it and come round and claim it, as it did all buried treasure. They gave out that only a couple of worthless trinkets had been found inside the crocodile, although in actual fact the man who cut it open acquired a fortune. He had no problems for the rest of his life. Who permitted him to cut open the crocodile? Who could say? People didn’t wait for permission under such circumstances. Thus had gone on the talk among the people about the crocodile when it was found dead. Velan, fanning him, had fallen asleep—he had just doubled up in his seat with the fan in his hand. Raju, who lay awake, had let his mind roam and touch the depths of morbid and fantastic thought. He was now touched by the sight of this man hunched in his seat. The poor fellow was tremendously excited and straining himself in order to make this penance a success, providing the great man concerned with every comfort—except, of course, food. Why not give the poor devil a chance, Raju said to himself, instead of hankering after food which one could not get anyway. He felt enraged at the persistence of food-thoughts. With a sort of vindictive resolution he told himself, ‘I’ll chase away all thought of food. For the next ten days I shall eradicate all thoughts of tongue and stomach from my mind.’ This resolution gave him a peculiar strength. He developed on those lines: ‘If by avoiding food I should help the trees bloom, and the grass grow, why not do it thoroughly?’ For the first time in his life he was making an earnest effort; for the first time he was learning the thrill of full application, outside money and

love; for the first time he was doing a thing in which he was not personally interested. He felt suddenly so enthusiastic that it gave him a new strength to go through with the ordeal. The fourth day of his fast found him quite sprightly. He went down to the river, stood facing upstream with his eyes shut, and repeated the litany. It was no more than a supplication to the heavens to send down rain and save humanity. It was set in a certain rhythmic chant, which lulled his senses and awareness, so that as he went on saying it over and over again the world around became blank. He nearly lost all sensation, except the numbness at his knees, through constant contact with cold water. Lack of food gave him a peculiar floating feeling, which he rather enjoyed, with the thought in the background, ‘This enjoyment is something Velan cannot take away from me.’ The hum of humanity around was increasing. His awareness of his surroundings was gradually lessening in a sort of inverse proportion. He was not aware of it, but the world was beginning to press around. The pen of the wandering journalist had done the trick. Its repercussions were far and wide. The railways were the first to feel the pressure. They had to run special trains for the crowds that were going to Malgudi. People travelled on footboards and on the roofs of coaches. The little Malgudi station was choked with passengers. Outside, the station buses stood, the conductors crying, ‘Special for Mangala leaving. Hurry up. Hurry up.’ People rushed up from the station into the buses and almost sat on top of one another. Gaffur’s taxi drove up and down a dozen times a day. And the crowd congregated around the river at Mangala. People sat in groups along its sandbank, down its stones and steps, all the way up the opposite bank, wherever they could squeeze themselves in. Never had this part of the country seen such a crowd. Shops sprang up overnight, as if by magic, on bamboo poles roofed with thatch, displaying coloured soda bottles and bunches of bananas and coconut-toffees. The Tea Propaganda Board opened a big tea- stall, and its posters, green tea plantations along the slopes of blue mountains, were pasted all around the temple wall. (People drank too much coffee and too little tea in these parts.) It had put up a tea-bar and served free tea in porcelain cups all day. The public swarmed around it like flies, and the flies swarmed on all the cups and sugar-bowls. The presence of the fly brought in the Health Department, which feared an outbreak of some epidemic in that crowded place without water. The khaki-clad health inspectors sprayed every inch of space with DDT and, with needle in hand, coaxed people to inoculate themselves against cholera, malaria, and what not. A few youngsters just for fun bared their biceps, while a big crowd stood about and watched. There was a blank space on the rear wall of the temple where they cleaned up the ground and made a space for people to sit around and watch a film show when it grew dark. They attracted

people to it by playing popular hits on the gramophone with its loudspeakers mounted on the withering treetops. Men, women, and children crowded in to watch the film shows, which were all about mosquitoes, malaria, plague and tuberculosis, and BCG vaccination. When a huge close-up of a mosquito was shown as the cause of malaria, a peasant was overheard saying, ‘Such huge mosquitoes! No wonder the people get malaria in those countries. Our own mosquitoes are so tiny that they are harmless,’ which depressed the lecturer on malaria so much that he remained silent for ten minutes. When he had done with health, he showed a few Government of India films about dams, river valleys, and various projects, with ministers delivering speeches. Far off, outside the periphery, a man had opened a gambling booth with a dartboard on a pole, and he had also erected a crude merry-go-round, which whined all day. Pedlars of various kinds were also threading in and out, selling balloons, reed whistles, and sweets. A large crowd always stood around and watched the saint with profound awe. They touched the water at his feet and sprinkled it over their heads. They stood indefinitely around, until the master of ceremonies, Velan, begged them to move. ‘Please go away. The Swami must have fresh air. If you have had your darshan, move on and let others have theirs. Don’t be selfish.’ And then the people moved on and enjoyed themselves in various ways. When the Swami went in to lie on his mat in the hall, they came again to look at him and stood about until Velan once again told them to keep moving. A few were specially privileged to sit on the edge of the mat very close to the great man. One of them was the schoolmaster, who took charge of all the telegrams and letters that were pouring in from all over the country wishing the Swami success. The post office at Mangala normally had a visiting postman who came once a week, and when a telegram came it was received at Aruna, a slightly bigger village seven miles down the river course, and was kept there until someone could be found going to Mangala. But now the little telegraph office had no rest—day and night messages poured in, just addressed ‘Swamiji’, that was all. They were piling up every hour and had to be sent down by special messengers. In addition to the arriving telegrams, there were many going out. The place was swarming with press reporters, who were rushing their hour-to- hour stories to their papers all over the world. They were an aggressive lot and the little telegraph-master was scared of them. They banged on his window and cried, ‘Urgent!’ They held out packets and packed-up films and photographs, and ordered him to dispatch them at once. They cried, ‘Urgent, urgent! If this packet does not reach my office today…’ and they threatened terrifying prospects and said all sorts of frightening things.

‘Press. Urgent!’ ‘Press. Urgent!’ They went on shouting till they reduced the man to a nervous wreck. He had promised his children that he would take them to see the Swamiji. The children cried, ‘They are also showing an Ali Baba film, a friend told me.’ But the man was given no time to fulfil his promise to his children. When the pressmen gave him respite, the keys rattled with incoming messages. He had spent a fairly peaceful life until then, and the present strain tore at his nerves. He sent off an SOS to all his official superiors whenever he found breathing space: ‘Handling two hundred messages today. Want relief.’ The roads were choked with traffic, country carts, buses and cycles, jeeps and automobiles of all kinds and ages. Pedestrians in files with hampers and baskets crossed the fields like swarms of ants converging on a lump of sugar. The air rang with the music of a few who had chosen to help the Swami by sitting near him, singing devotional songs to the accompaniment of a harmonium and tabla. The busiest man here was an American, wearing a thin bush-shirt over corduroys. He arrived in a jeep with a trailer, dusty, rugged, with a mop of tousled hair, at about one in the afternoon on the tenth day of the fast and set himself to work immediately. He had picked up an interpreter at Madras and had driven straight through, three hundred and seventy-five miles. He pushed everything aside and took charge of the scene. He looked about for only a moment, driving his jeep down to the hibiscus bush behind the temple. He jumped off and strode past everyone to the pillared hall. He went up to the recumbent Swami and brought his palms together, muttering, ‘Namaste’—the Indian salute, which he had learned the moment he landed in India. He had briefed himself on all the local manners. Raju looked on him with interest; the large, pink-faced arrival was a novel change in the routine. The pink visitor stooped low to ask the schoolmaster, sitting beside the Swami, ‘Can I speak to him in English?’ ‘Yes. He knows English.’ The man lowered himself on to the edge of the mat and with difficulty sat down on the floor, Indian fashion, crossing his legs. He bent close to the Swami to say, ‘I’m James J. Malone. I’m from California. My business is production of films and TV shows. I have come to shoot this subject, take it back to our country, and show it to our people there. I have in my pocket the sanction from New Delhi for this project. May I have yours?’ Raju thought over it and nodded serenely. ‘Okay. Thanks a lot. I won’t disturb you—but will you let me shoot pictures of you? I wouldn’t disturb you. Will it bother you if I move a few things up and fix the cable and lights?’

‘No, you may do your work,’ said the sage. The man became extremely busy. He sprang to his feet, pulled the trailer into position, and started his generator. Its throbbing filled the place, overwhelming all other noises. It brought in a huge crowd of men, women, and children to watch the fun. All the other attractions in the camp became secondary. As Malone drew the cables about, a big crowd followed him. He grinned at them affably and went about his business, Velan and one or two others ran through the crowd, crying, ‘Is this a fish market? Get away, all of you who have no work here!’ But nobody was affected by his orders. They climbed pillars and pedestals and clung to all sorts of places to reach positions of vantage. Malone went on with his job without noticing anything. Finally, when he had the lights ready, he brought in his camera and took pictures of the people and the temple, and of the Swami from various angles and distances. ‘I’m sorry, Swami, if the light is too strong.’ When he had finished with the pictures, he brought in a microphone, put it near the Swami’s face, and said, ‘Let us chat. Okay? Tell me, how do you like it here?’ ‘I am only doing what I have to do; that’s all. My likes and dislikes do not count.’ ‘How long have you been without food now?’ ‘Ten days.’ ‘Do you feel weak?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘When will you break your fast?’ ‘Twelfth day.’ ‘Do you expect to have the rains by then?’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Can fasting abolish all wars and bring world peace?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you champion fasting for everyone?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What about the caste system? Is it going?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Will you tell us something about your early life?’ ‘What do you want me to say?’ ‘Er—for instance, have you always been a yogi?’ ‘Yes; more or less.’ It was very hard for the Swami to keep up a continuous flow of talk. He felt exhausted and lay back. Velan and others looked on with concern. The schoolmaster said, ‘He is fatigued.’

‘Well, I guess we will let him rest for a while. I’m sorry to bother you.’ The Swami lay back with his eyes closed. A couple of doctors, deputed by the government to watch and report, went to the Swami, felt his pulse and heart. They helped him to stretch himself on the mat. A big hush fell upon the crowd. Velan plied his fan more vigorously than ever. He looked distraught and unhappy. In fact, keeping a sympathetic fast, he was now eating on alternate days, confining his diet to saltless boiled greens. He looked worn out. He said to the master, ‘One more day. I don’t know how he is going to bear it. I dread to think how he can pull through another day.’ Malone resigned himself to waiting. He looked at the doctor and asked, ‘How do you find him?’ ‘Not very satisfactory; blood pressure is two hundred systolic. We suspect one of the kidneys is affected. Uremia is setting in. We are trying to give him small doses of saline and glucose. His life is valuable to the country.’ ‘Would you say a few words about his health?’ Malone asked, thrusting his microphone forward. He was sitting on the head of a carved elephant decorating the steps to the pillared hall. The doctors looked at each other in panic and said, ‘Sorry. We are government servants—we cannot do it without permission. Our reports are released only from headquarters. We cannot give them direct. Sorry.’ ‘Okay. I wouldn’t hurt your customs.’ He looked at his watch and said, ‘I guess that’s all for the day.’ He approached the schoolmaster and said, ‘Tell me, what time does he step into the river tomorrow?’ ‘Six a.m.’ ‘Could you come over and show me the location?’ The schoolmaster got up and took him along. The man said, ‘Wait, wait. You’ll not mind understudying him for a minute. Show me where he starts from, how he gets up, and where he steps and stands.’ The teacher hesitated, feeling too shy to understudy the sage. The man urged him on. ‘Come on, be cooperative. I’ll take care of it, if there is any trouble.’ The teacher started from the pedestal. ‘He starts here. Now follow me.’ He showed the whole route down to the river, and the spot where the Swami would stop and pray, standing in water for two hours. The crowd followed keenly every inch of this movement, and someone in the crowd was joking, ‘Oh! The master is also going to do penance and starve!’ And they all laughed. Malone threw a smile at them from time to time, although he did not know what they were saying. He surveyed the place from various angles, measured the distance from the generator, shook the schoolmaster’s hand, and went back to his

jeep. ‘See you tomorrow morning.’ He drove off amidst a great roar and puffing of the engine as his jeep rattled over the pits and ditches beyond the hibiscus, until he reached the road. The eleventh day, morning. The crowd, pouring in all night, had nearly trebled itself because it was the last day of the fast. All night one could hear the voices of people and the sound of vehicles rattling over the roads and pathways. Velan and a band of his assistants formed a cordon and kept the crowd out of the pillared hall. They said, ‘The Swami must have fresh air to breathe. It’s the only thing he takes now. Don’t choke the air. Everyone can have his darshan at the river, I promise. Go away now. He is resting.’ It was an all-night vigil. The numerous lanterns and lamps created a criss-cross of bewildering shadows on all hedges, trees, and walls. At five-thirty in the morning the doctors examined the Swami. They wrote and signed a bulletin saying: ‘Swami’s condition grave. Declines glucose and saline. Should break the fast immediately. Advise procedure.’ They sent a man running to send off this telegram to their headquarters. It was a top-priority government telegram, and it fetched a reply within an hour: ‘Imperative that Swami should be saved. Persuade best to cooperate. Should not risk life. Try give glucose and saline. Persuade Swami resume fast later.’ They sat beside the Swami and read the message to him. He smiled at it. He beckoned Velan to come nearer. The doctors appealed, ‘Tell him he should save himself. Please, do your best. He is very weak.’ Velan bent close to the Swami and said, ‘The doctors say—’ In answer Raju asked the man to bend nearer, and whispered, ‘Help me to my feet,’ and clung to his arm and lifted himself. He got to his feet. He had to be held by Velan and another on each side. In the profoundest silence the crowd followed him down. Everyone followed at a solemn, silent pace. The eastern sky was red. Many in the camp were still sleeping. Raju could not walk, but he insisted upon pulling himself along all the same. He panted with the effort. He went down the steps of the river, halting for breath on each step, and finally reached his basin of water. He stepped into it, shut his eyes, and turned towards the mountain, his lips muttering the prayer. Velan and another held him each by an arm. The morning sun was out by now; a great shaft of light illuminated the surroundings. It was difficult to hold Raju on his feet, as he had a tendency to flop down. They held him as if he were a baby. Raju opened his eyes, looked about, and said, ‘Velan, it’s raining in the hills. I can feel it corning up under my feet, up my legs—’ He sagged down.

The Mispaired Anklet PUHAR WAS a flourishing seacoast town where the River Cauvery joined the sea. This story begins with the marriage of Kovalan, the hero of this tale, and Kannagi being celebrated, with the whole town rejoicing and feasting, every citizen having been invited by an announcer riding on an elephant up and down the streets of the city. Kovalan and Kannagi lived a happy married life in their comfortable home until the day when Madhavi, a young danseuse, gave her first dance recital before the king. In recognition of her talent the king presented her with a garland of green leaves and one thousand and eight pieces of gold. According to custom, Madhavi could now select a lover for herself. She passed the garland to a hunchbacked woman who stood in the city square, where wealthy citizens passed or congregated, and announced, ‘This garland is worth one thousand and eight pieces of gold. Whoever buys it also becomes the husband of the most accomplished dancer honoured by our king.’ Kovalan became a ready customer for this garland, and gained admission to Madhavi’s bridal chamber and forgot all his problems and responsibilities in life. When he was not making love to her, he spent the time listening to the music of her steps. The city was celebrating Indra’s festival. There were music, dancing, and entertainment everywhere; special prayers were said in the temples; people moved hither and thither in gay dress, and the air throbbed with speech and laughter. Kovalan and Madhavi went about together and enjoyed the festivities. At the end of the day, Madhavi went home, freshened her body with a bath in a cool, scented fountain, put on a new set of ornaments and dress, and in Kovalan’s company passed again through the illuminated city to the seashore, which twinkled with lamps hoisted on poles around groups of merrymakers and gaily lighted ships anchored off shore. Madhavi had her own corner on the beach, with canopy and screens set up for privacy, away from the tumult of the waves and the din of the crowds. When they had settled down, Madhavi took her lute out of its silken cover and tuned it. Kovalan took it from her, casually ran

his fingers over the strings, and burst into a song in praise of the river and the sea and then addressed to a beauty tormenting a lover with her slender waist and weighty breasts, ‘who walks like a swan in the shade of punnai trees, where the waves break on the shore.’ ‘O foolish swan, do not go near her, your gait cannot rival hers.’ Another song said, ‘Your father kills the living things of the sea by catching them in the meshes of his net. You kill living things by catching them in the net of your long eyes.’ ‘She is a goddess who dwells there in the sweet-smelling groves of flowers’ ran another. ‘Had I known of the existence of this goddess, I would not have come here at all.’ Madhavi pretended to appreciate the songs, gently took the lute from his hands, and began a song of a lovelorn girl pining for her vanished lover. ‘Through the swamps, fenced by the park…someone came and stood before us, saying, “Make me pleased!” and we could not take our eyes off him.’ ‘Seeing the swan playing with its mate, a godlike one stood looking on all yesterday. He would not leave our minds, even as the gold-tinted moss cannot leave our body.… O crane, come not near our park, for you will not speak of my present lovesickness to my lord of the sea-trace. Do not approach our park…’* Kovalan muttered, ‘I merely sang a good composition, but she has her mind on someone else who inspires her.’ He withdrew his hands from Madhavi’s, saying, The day has come to a close, let us stir ourselves.’ She did not get up. But he hurried home. After he was gone, Madhavi got into her chariot and went home. She dressed and decorated herself afresh and moved to the upper terrace and sang more songs, danced, and fell into a languor. Thereafter she wove a garland with several flowers, and, taking the pale inner petal of the screw-pine, etched a message of love on its smooth surface: ‘This moon, who has risen with the love- anguish…should kill the poor lonely ones with his sharp darts.…Please understand this.’ She called one of her maids and sent her off with this message to Kovalan; she was to repeat the message orally, and then give him the garland wherein he would see it written. The maid came back to say that Kovalan had rejected the message and the garland. Madhavi felt unhappy but sighed, ‘If he does not come tonight, he is certain to come tomorrow morning,’ and spent a sleepless night. Meanwhile, Kovalan said to his wife Kannagi, ‘We must leave this town.’ Kannagi knew that Kovalan’s funds were fast dwindling, through his buying presents and fineries for Madhavi. Kannagi had parted with her ornaments one after another in order that he might find the money for spending.

She had been complacent and unquestioning. She replied now, ‘I have still a pair of anklets,’ leaving unexpressed the thought, ‘which you may pawn to buy presents for Madhavi.’ But he said, receiving the anklets, ‘This very night we will slip out of this place, go to Madurai, and start a new life in that city with the little money we may get by selling these. I will not be seen by my parents until I have redeemed my integrity. One becomes defiled to the very core through association with low, mercenary women, and by the time one learns the truth of the matter one is too far gone in damnation. This is no occasion for leave-taking. Let us slip away quietly.’ At dead of night they packed their clothes in a small bundle that could be slung over the shoulder, shut their house, and started out. The festive crowd had dissipated out of sight and all the noise of merriment had died down. They passed along the south bank of the river, which was deserted; on the highway they became merged with groups of minstrels and mendicants and wandering scholars and saints, travelling in the same direction, and forgot their own troubles listening to their talk. ‘We missed all this staying at home,’ Kovalan said. They reached the ferry and crossed over to the north bank of the river and ultimately came to a town called Uriyur. Kovalan left his wife in a rest house and sought a tank for his ablutions. As he stood waist-deep in water, scrubbing himself, a stranger accosted him and said, ‘I want to speak to you.’ ‘Who are you?’ asked Kovalan. ‘My friend, don’t you recognize me? I am from Puhar. I have worn out the soles of my feet tracking you, inquiring everywhere, “Have you seen such-and- such?”’ ‘Why did you follow me?’ asked Kovalan sharply. ‘Madhavi has sent me, she is dying of grief at the separation. She begs a million pardons for any pain she may have caused you. She begs you to return home—begs your forgiveness for her mistakes.’ Kovalan brooded for a moment and said, ‘Go back.’ ‘I saw your parents too, and they are heartbroken.’ Tell them that I’ll seek my fortune and return to them as a worthy son some day. I have been living in a sort of fantasy all along; now I see the realities. Tell Madhavi that I have no grudge against her, but I have definitely turned my back on the past.’ When Kovalan returned to his wife, they were ready for the road again. He did not mention his encounter with the messenger from Puhar, for fear of disturbing Kannagi’s mind. They trudged along and finally reached the bank of

the Vaigai, which skirted the boundary of Madurai, the capital of the Pandyan kingdom. They viewed the soaring temple tower and the mansions of Madurai city and felt happy and relieved that they had reached the end of their quest. Kovalan stood on the edge of the river god, crossed it, and reached the city boundary. In the city the couple were received into a colony of cattle tenders. They were lodged in a cottage, surrounded by a green hedge, with a cool inner courtyard and walls splashed with red mud, and a kitchen stocked with rice, vegetables, buttermilk, jackfruit, cucumbers, pomegranates, and mangoes. Kannagi felt happy to be running a home again after weeks of tramp-like existence. She washed the floor of the house. When food was ready, Kannagi spread a grass mat for her husband to sit on, and a green plantain leaf for him to dine on. After he was fed, she gave him betel nuts and leaves to chew. With his lips red with betel juice, Kovalan sat back and said, ‘You have been forbearing; how your parents would grieve if they knew of the hardship you have gone through.’ He became regretful at the thought of his misdeeds. ‘I have wasted my life in the society of an easy going woman and scandalmongers, wasted my time talking loudly and guffawing at bawdy jokes.’ Kannagi said, ‘Why speak of the past again and again? I was unhappy, no doubt, but no one could have guessed how I felt in those days. Your parents were kind and considerate.’ In the end he said, ‘I will now take one of your anklets to the city, sell it, and come back with money, and then we will start a new life. Who knows? We may return home soon with riches and re-establish ourselves honourably.’ He embraced her before leaving, averting his eyes to conceal his tears; he felt depressed at having to leave her alone in the midst of strangers. As he briskly walked out, he was so preoccupied that he failed to notice a humped bull in front of him, indicating a bad omen. He passed through various parts of the city. At the bazaar he noticed walking past him an imposing man in a brocade coat, flourishing a pair of pincers to indicate that he was a master goldsmith, followed by a company of minor goldsmiths. At the sight of him Kovalan thought, ‘This must be the famous goldsmith of the Pandyan court. I am fortunate to come across him so easily.’ He approached him and said, ‘You are the prince of goldsmiths, I presume. Your fame is known even in Puhar.’ The goldsmith smiled patronizingly. Kovalan now asked, ‘May I trouble you to appraise for me a piece of jewellery, an anklet fit for the queen’s feet?’ The goldsmith said pompously, ‘I’m generally concern ed with the making

of crowns and sceptres for our kings, but I am not totally ignorant of feminine adornments.’ Whereupon Kovalan produced the anklet. The goldsmith examined it with minute care and delight and declared enthusiastically, This is not an anklet that an ordinary woman could aspire to, it is fit only for our queen. Let me speak to her and come back. Stay in that hut. Don’t go away, I will be back soon.’ The king and the queen had had a lovers’ quarrel recently. The queen had left his company on the pretext of a headache. The king transacted some business with his councillors and left for the queen’s chambers at the earliest possible moment in order to pacify her. As he approached the portals of the queen’s chamber the goldsmith crossed his path and after formal courtesies of address said, ‘Forgive my interrupting Your Majesty, but the matter is urgent. One of the queen’s anklets has been missing. I have managed to catch the thief and have shut him in my humble hut. He is a subtle thief who does not operate with daggers and crowbars but with black magic.’ It was a fateful moment, and as the king was in a hurry to meet his wife, he summoned the city watchman and ordered, ‘If you find the anklet in the possession of the thief, execute him and fetch the anklet.’ He was in a hurry, and the fates were gearing their engines for a tragedy, so the king spoke thoughtlessly, although normally he would have said, ‘Bring the thief before me.’ He uttered the sentence of death without giving the matter thought, and hurried on to the queen’s apartment. The goldsmith returned with a company of men and said to Kovalan, ‘These men have come to examine the anklet at the command of our sovereign.’ Kovalan, pleased that he was coming so near a transaction, messed about with his bag again while the goldsmith explained to the executioners the minute details of the anklet about to be displayed. ‘It has workmanship of the highest kind; grooves at the neck; a slight depression with silver garlands entwining, and two leaves. It has a peculiar polish at the stem that has given it the facet of a crystal, reflecting off a diamond-shaped cutting.’ As he described it further, Kovalan’s eyes shone with pleasure; he took it as a recommendation from the goldsmith and remarked, ‘What an observant eye you have, you great artist in gold!’ ‘True, true,’ said the crafty goldsmith. ‘Otherwise how could I have progressed in my profession? I am known for my searching eye, which can find out a lot of things.’ He glanced at his companions and smiled wryly. When the anklet was produced, the chief executioner took it in his hand and examined it in detail. ‘Yes, it is the same anklet that you have described,’ he

said. ‘Now let the man pay the price accordingly,’ said the goldsmith, and the men stepped forward, encircling Kovalan. Kovalan looked about in bewilderment. More bewilderment when the chief cried, ‘This man does not look like a thief.’ ‘A thief who has mastered his art will look least like one,’ said the goldsmith. ‘The science of thieving mentions eight methods that may be employed by an expert thief: drugs, illusion, control of mischievous spirits, and so forth; he can pick up your valuables and walk right into your presence while you watch him helplessly; he can make himself invisible, he can look like a good and saintly one and extract worship from you…’ The goldsmith expatiated on this theme. Kovalan listened to it and said, ‘Let us come to a decision; if you noble men approve of this piece of jewellery—’ ‘Spend no more time,’ said the goldsmith. ‘Finish your errand and let us go back.’ A young man with a lance said, ‘Do you know what once happened when I drew my sword—it jumped into the thief’s hand and suddenly I found myself at his mercy. Some are so crafty and deft! Our king’s order must be carried out.’ ‘No more talk,’ said a drunken man in their midst, and he hurled his scimitar at Kovalan, practically cutting him in two. Blood flowed from the fallen man. The goldsmith and executioners withdrew. The goldsmith looked back as if gratified that he had had divine assistance in his crime. He had stolen the queen’s anklet earlier in the day and felt it a peculiar good fortune that he should have come across someone to take on that crime with appropriate evidence. At the cowherd’s colony, a matron said to her daughter, ‘The milk in the pot has not curdled; tears dim the eyes of our cattle; the butter in the store is all hardened, lambs are dull, cows shudder and bellow, and their bell ropes have snapped. What calamity has befallen whom?’ They thought it over and pronounced the usual remedy for warding off evil and turning the mind to cheerful subjects. ‘We shall dance the Kuruvai, for our guest, for our beautiful guest watching us.’ An elaborate dance was organized in their midst. Kannagi felt worried. Why was her husband gone so long? It was diverting to watch her hosts sing and dance as they depicted episodes from the life of the god Krishna, who was the patron god of milkmaids. After the dance the matron went to bathe in the river, heard rumours about Kovalan, and hurried back home. Kannagi cried at the sight of her, ‘Friend, why won’t you speak? Where is my husband? Every particle of air in my lungs seems

fevered. I can hardly breathe. Where is my husband? I feel restless. Help me, are people saying anything about him? Don’t hide anything from me.’ ‘They said he was a thief who had stolen the royal anklet, and executed him,’ said the matron. Kannagi fell in a faint, recovered, and raved against the fates, the country, and the king. ‘The Pandyan king, reputed to hold a righteous sceptre, has committed injustice. My husband a thief!’ She shouted at the top of her voice and called up all the women and the girls who had been dancing and addressed them. ‘Could my husband be a thief, thieving my own anklet! O sun god, you are witness to all things of this world. Is my husband a thief? Answer!’ she cried commandingly. Kannagi gathered herself, her stature seemed to swell; her eyes blazed with anger. She cried, ‘Here is my anklet, the widowed one. They have killed my husband, unable to pay the price for the one he had with him. Now who is the real thief?’ Followed by a sympathizing crowd, Kannagi strode through the streets of the city with authority in her gait and fire in her speech and looks. People trembled at the sight of her. Some persons led her to where her husband’s body lay; and the sun (as the poet who composed this tale explains) set behind the hills, in order to draw a curtain over the sad spectacle. Night came on. Kannagi mourned. ‘Is it right that you should be lying there in that bloody pool while I…while I… Are there no women in this city whose purity could prevent such an injustice? Are there no good people in this country or women of purity and devotion to their husbands? How can such an injustice happen where there are good men and good women? Has god forsaken this town?’ While she lamented thus, hugging the inert body of her husband, strange things seemed to happen. She thought that she saw the body stir and her husband stand up and wipe the tears from her face and mutter, ‘Stay here, and go heavenward.’ Kannagi cried, ‘What is happening? Is it some mischievous spirit that is deceiving me? Where can I find the truth of all this?’ She left the spot and ran towards the palace, saying again and again, ‘I must get an explanation from the cruel king himself…’ The king was in the company of his wife. The bell at the gate tolled furiously. Over the sounding of bell Kannagi screamed, ‘Go and wake your king who has put his conscience to sleep, whose heart has become granite, and tell him that a wretched woman bearing a widowed anklet is at his gate.’ The gatekeepers were cowed by the appearance of the woman and ran to the

king’s presence and announced, ‘Your Majesty, a woman of frightening aspect seeks audience. Is she Kali, the Goddess of Destruction? Is she…?’ ‘Let her in,’ commanded the king. When she was brought in, he asked, ‘Who are you? What do you want here?’ ‘You have murdered my husband. We came from Puhar only to seek our fortune here.’ ‘O my most revered sister, is it not my duty to execute a thief?’ ‘My anklet has been stolen,’ added the queen. ‘And it was found with your husband, who was trying to sell it.’ ‘Here is another one, take it also,’ said Kannagi. ‘All the anklets in the world are yours, O queen, spouse of the embodiment of justice.’ She tossed her anklet in the queen’s lap. The queen, looking at it, said, ‘This also looks like mine, but how is it there are three anklets now? I had only two.’ ‘Does a thief take away or add? Do you know?’ asked Kannagi with bitter laughter. ‘What you are wearing on your left ankle is not yours, it belongs to the thief who lies in bloody dust.’ The king seemed to lose in a moment his regality, and the queen was panic- stricken. ‘My evil dream of last night—’ she began. Kannagi asked, ‘Do you at least know what it is inside that rattles and tinkles when your anklet is shaken?’ The queen took time to understand the purport of the question and said, ‘Pearls, yes… Pearls inside.’ ‘Break open my anklet, which is on your left foot, and see what is in it.’ The queen handed her the anklet without a word. Kannagi broke it open, and sparkling gems spilled out of it. The king faltered at the sight. ‘What king am I to allow a goldsmith to sway my judgement?’ He tottered and fell from his seat, and the queen broke into a loud lamentation. Kannagi watched the scene coldly and strode out of the palace, loudly shouting the virtue of her town Puhar and all the good things that had happened there since she knew it, in contrast to this city where evil flourished. She walked round the city thrice with unceasing laments, declaring, ‘If I am a chaste woman, I shall not let this city flourish.’ Then she tore her robes, twisted and tore off her left breast, and flung it over the city. Immediately the god of fire, in the shape of a brahmin of blue complexion, appeared before her and asked, ‘I will, of course, destroy this city as you command, but is there anyone you would spare?’ ‘Spare only the innocent, the good, the learned, the infirm, and the children, and all dumb creatures.’

The city was enveloped in flames immediately. Those who could escape from the city poured out of its gates. The rest perished. The presiding deities of the town left. Kannagi roamed through its streets and alleys restlessly, bewildered and in a state of delirium. The presiding deity of the city, with her head decorated with a crescent and her matted locks, white radiant face, half of her body dark blue and the other half golden, with a golden lotus in her left hand and a sword in her right, unwilling to face the sorrow-stricken wife, approached her softly from behind and murmured gently, ‘Blessed lady, listen to my words. I understand your suffering. I see the havoc that your rage has wrought on our city. Please listen to my words for a moment. The king has never committed any injustice in his life; he comes of a long line of righteous rulers who have observed strictly the laws of justice and humanity. But what has happened to your husband is unparalleled and is a result of fate. Listen, fair lady, to the history of his previous life. Your husband, Kovalan, in his previous birth was called Bharata and in the service of his monarch caught hold of an innocent trader who was selling his merchandise in the streets of Sangama and denounced him as a spy and had him executed. The trader’s wife was grief-stricken and wandered as a mad woman for fourteen days, raving and cursing, until she climbed the hill and jumped off a cliff, uttering her curse on the man responsible for her husband’s death. As a result of it, now you have to go through this agony. You will have redemption in fourteen days.’ This was consoling, and as Kannagi’s heart softened with understanding, the fire in the city abated gradually. She passed the fourteen days wandering and waiting. She walked along the river’s edge and reached the northern mountain tracts. A group of country girls while bathing and sporting on the mountain roads saw an extraordinary being who had only one breast appear before them. Her presence was electrifying, and the women worshipped her at first sight. Presently they saw her husband come to her in spirit form and take her heavenward. The spot became sacred as that of the godly wife. A latter-day king built a temple on the spot and installed the image of Kannagi in it for public worship. The image was carved out of a slab of stone hewn from the Himalayas and bathed in the water of the Ganges, and it came to be known as Pattini Devi— meaning ‘the wife who became a goddess’. *The songs are quoted from V.R.R. Dikshitar’s translation of Silappadhikaram—The Epic of the Anklet

published by the Oxford University Press (1939).

SELECTED NON-FICTION

My Days (An excerpt) ALL DAY long, I sat half buried in sand piled in a corner of our garden, raising castles and mountain-ranges, unaware of the fierce Madras sun overhead. I had a peacock and a monkey for company. The monkey was chained to a post, on top of which a little cabin was available for his shelter, but he preferred to sit on the roof of his home, hanging down his tail. He responded to the name Rama by baring his teeth, and kept a wary eye on the peacock, which was perpetually engaged in scratching the mud and looking for edible insects. I cannot say exactly when they came into my life, but they seemed to have been always there with me. In an early photo of myself, when I was four years old, I am set on a miniature bamboo chair flanked by the peacock and the monkey. My uncle (Mother’s brother), who brought me up, must have been one of the earliest amateur photographers in India. He kept his head, on most bright afternoons, under a black hood enveloping an enormous camera on a tripod. He posed me constantly against the flowers in the garden, in the company of my pets. I had to remain rigid, unblinking, and immobile whenever he photographed us, and it was a feat to keep the monkey and the peacock still. I enjoyed these sessions, although my grandmother declared from time to time that a photograph was likely to shorten the subject’s life. I was proud of the group in the picture and hoped that others would see a resemblance between me and Rama. When I sought confirmation on this point, my grandmother was horrified and said, ‘What a fool to want to look like a monkey! You are in bad company. You must send away that creature. Wanting to look like a monkey when god has endowed you with such large eyes and all those curls falling down to your cheeks!’ She was so fond of my curls that she never let a barber come near me, which meant that I had constantly to part the veil of hair with my fingers when I wished to look at anyone. The peacock was not fully grown yet, but he bore his three-foot tail haughtily, and enjoyed the freedom of the house, pecking away every ant that

had the ill luck to come within the range of his vision. Most afternoons, when I was tired of the sand dump, I moved to the threshold of the door opening on Purasawalkam High Road and watched the traffic, which consisted of cyclists and horse or bullock-drawn carriages. A caravan of corporation carts passed along, stuffed to the brim with garbage, with the top layer blowing off in the high wind coming from the sea at this hour. The last few carriages forming the rear of the caravan were wagons, tar-painted and sealed, filled with night soil; the entire column moved westward and was soon lost in the dusty glare of the evening sun, but it left an odorous trail which made me jump up and rush in crying, ‘Rubbish carts are passing.’ This announcement was directed at Grandmother, who would thereby understand that it was time to begin her evening operations, namely, the watering of over fifty flower beds and pots. (She knew a potter who made special giant-size pots for her, a size I have never seen anywhere before or since, each one being capable of bearing a tree.) She reared in her garden over twenty hibiscus families, blue, grey, purple, double-row petals, and several kinds of jasmine, each scattering its special fragrance into the night air—numerous exotic flowers in all shapes and sizes. A corner of her garden was reserved for nurturing certain delicate plants which gasped for breath. She acquired geronia, geranium, lavender, and violet, which could flourish only at an altitude of three thousand feet in Bangalore, and stubbornly tried to cultivate them in the salty air of Madras. When the plants wilted she shed tears and cursed the Madras climate. Even after the plants had perished in their boxes, she tended them hopefully for a few days before throwing them over the wall, to be ultimately gathered into the corporation caravan going westward. Filling up a bronze water-pot, a bucket, and a watering-can by turns, my grandmother transported water from a tap in the backyard impartially to all her plants, and finally through a brass syringe shot into the air a grand column of water which would descend like a gift from the heavens on the whole garden, dampening down the mud and stirring up an earthy smell (which tempted one to taste the mud), the foliage glittering in the sun like finely cut diamonds as water dripped off their edges. The peacock busily kept pace with us as we moved up and down bearing the water-pots. When a shower of water descended, the peacock fanned out its tail, parading its colours. At this moment, one could hear Rama rattle his chain, since he always felt uneasy when the peacock preened itself thus, and demonstrated his protest by clanking his chain and tumbling around on the roof of his own cabin. As the evening grew dim, I drove the peacock under a bamboo coop in a corner of the living room. Rama would be fed with rice and driven into his cabin. He became purblind and bemused at dusk and one could push him hither and thither as one pleased.

Sometimes, when I sat at the street door, the peacock stood beside me. Every passer-by would stop to admire it; sometimes a youngster would beg for a feather to be plucked out and given to him. The first time I had this request I saw no reason why I should not oblige him; after all, he wanted only a feather while I had a whole bird to myself, and so I allowed him to pluck out a feather of his choice, just one. When he reached for it, the peacock stabbed the back of his hand with its beak and the boy fled screaming. I had not noticed till then how aggressive this bird could be. I began to notice that it possessed the temperament of a watch-dog. Quite a variety of persons had to pass in and out of our home all day, having business with my grandmother—mendicants, vegetable vendors, the tailor and goldsmith—and if anyone stepped in without warning they were viciously chased by the peacock. It generally perched on the wall over the door and directly descended on the visitors, pestering them until it was caught by its tail and dragged away. My uncle, the only other member of the family, would not be home yet. He had a room upstairs which he used as his study and dark-room combined, where when he was not washing negatives, he pored over his class books. He went out in the mornings to catch the tram for his college and returned late in the evening. On holiday afternoons, he lugged out his camera on the tripod and fixed me in front of it. Sometimes he sat on the kitchen floor and narrated the day’s events at his college; he was a member of the college drama group, and he explained to us Shakespeare’s Tempest and how they were trying to produce it; he mimicked some of his friends who acted in it and that made us laugh; he was a good raconteur and I knew The Tempest long before I knew anything else. My uncle was Prospero and he described how his best chum, who did Caliban, entered his role so heartily that he proved a public menace during the rehearsals. He spoke of his professor, one Dr Skinner, with great admiration, and we all admired him too, although by hearsay. All sound ceased presently. The streets became silent but for the swear words emanating from the shop across the High Road while the owner berated his habitual debtors seeking further favours. He called his defaulting customers and their mothers names, and if I had picked up choice slang it must have been from the rich verbal arsenal that freely floated in the air. Over all that hubbub one heard the tramcar grinding the rails at its terminus in the street of shops two furlongs away. Eastward of our home were shops and the tram terminus, where one boarded to get to the wide world and the seacoast beyond, whereas the west side, where the corporation caravans went, seemed full of sinister possibilities. From that direction, one heard bickerings and courses and affrays from an unseen tavern. Corpses were borne in funeral processions in

the same direction. I shuddered to look that way, but longed to see the shops and tramway at the other end. It was exciting, one day, to be asked to go with my uncle to the street of shops. I clung to his arm and marched along. It was the evening hour again. I noticed a man with his hand and shoulder stuck through a bamboo ladder, going from post to post lighting the street lamps. The lamp-posts were few and far between: hexagonal glass shades on top of cast-iron fluted pillars. The lamp-lighter was an old man wearing a khaki coat and a blue turban, equipped with a ladder, a box of matches, rags, and a can of oil. He moved from pillar to pillar, unhurryingly. I was fascinated. I had never suspected that there could be so much to do to light up the dark nights. Clinging to my uncle’s fingers, I watched him, my head turned back—a difficult operation, since my uncle dragged me along, never slackening his pace. The lamp-lighter went up his ladder, opened a little ventilator, took out the lamp, cleaned and wiped it with the rag, filled it with oil, lit up the wick and closed the shutter, climbed down, thrust his shoulder through the ladder again, and passed on to the next one. I had numerous questions welling up within me, all sorts of things I wished to know about the man—his name, where he came from, if he slept wearing the ladder, what he ate, and so forth; but before I could phrase them properly, I had to be moving along with my questions unuttered. Other spectacles presently attracted my attention: the Pankaja Lodge, a sweetmeat shop with edibles heaped up in trays, presided over by a bespectacled man with a gleaming gold chain around his neck. The frying smell generated here reached me every afternoon while I sat at the street door of my home, with the peacock at my back, and made me very hungry. Today, my uncle stopped by to pick up a little packet of eatables for me, wrapped in a crackling brown leaf. I munched it, immediately forgetting the lamp-lighter. My uncle walked me onto the edge of the road in order to protect me from the traffic hazards of those days; one constantly heard reports of persons knocked down by cyclists. Milkmen with milking-cans in hand were driving their cows through the streets. I jumped aside at the sight of the cows, although my uncle tried to convince me they were harmless. When we passed an orange-coloured school building with a green gate, my uncle promised that I would in due course find myself there. I did not welcome the idea. It was a gaunt-looking building with a crucifix on its roof, and I hated it at first sight. With time my outlook did not change. As far as this school was concerned, my first reaction seemed also to be the final one. In due course I became a pupil

there. On the first day I wept in fear. The sight of my classmates shook my nerves. An old man with silvery stubble on his chin, turban crowning his head, clad in a striped coat without buttons and a white dhoti, a short cane permanently tucked under his arm, presided over the class of infants. Under his watchful eye we sat on the floor and kneaded small lumps of wet clay and shaped them into vegetables, fruits, and what not; we also cut out coloured sheets of paper and made more vegetables and fruits and also boats and quadrupeds. He brought his cane down violently on the table in order to gain our attention and tell us what to do next. I do not think I ever saw him lay his cane on anyone’s back, but he flourished it and used it as a medium of self-expression, like a conductor’s baton. My main ambition in life was to remain unnoticed by him. My matter how hard I tried, the clay never assumed proper shape in my hands. It never retained any symmetry or shape; while other boys produced marvellous imitations of all kinds of objects in creation, my own handiwork remained unclassifiable (perhaps I was ahead of my time as a sculptor). I was always afraid of what the teacher might say; luckily for me I was a late admission and was given the last seat, and we were quite a crowd in the class; by the time he reached me, the time would be up, and we would have to run to the water-tap under the tree and clean up the mess on our fingers. Thinking it over, I am unable to explain how this course helped me in becoming literate. If we were not kneading clay, we were only cutting papers and folding them. We were armed each with a pair of scissors; this was a welcome instrument in one’s hand, no doubt, but the fingers ached with a dull pain at the joints when one had to cut out angular objects—the scissor points would not easily lend themselves to any maneuvering around the corners. At the next stage I carried a slate, which displayed on its face a single alphabet or number traced over and over again, bloated and distorted by overlapping lines. This again was a mess, the slate having become white with the constant rubbing with the palm of my hand, as if a great quantity of talcum had been spilled on it, and it was always difficult to decipher the writing, which was white on a whiter background. Again my neighbours seemed to excel in this task; their letters were sharper, symmetrical, and they somehow managed to keep their slates shining black, against which the white letters stood out clearly. The teacher did not seem to mind how I wrote or what I produced, so long as I remained within the classroom without making myself a nuisance in any way. All that he objected to, in me or anyone, was sticking out one’s tongue while writing, which most children are apt to do. He kept a sharp lookout for tongues-out in the classroom, and tapped his desk violently with the cane and shouted, ‘Hey, you brats, pull your tongues back,’ and all of us obeyed him with a simultaneous clicking of our tongues— one

golden chance, not to be missed, for making a little noise in an otherwise gloomy and silent atmosphere. We were let off at four-thirty. Emerging from the school gate, we always ran into the rear-guard of the corporation caravan and followed it; there was no way of avoiding it, as its route and time were fixed inviolably like the motion of the stars in their orbits. Boys going in the same direction formed a group, and we chatted and played and giggled on our way home. My grandmother examined my slate when I returned home, and remarked, ‘They don’t seem to teach you anything in your school.’ Every day she commented this and then ordered, ‘Wash your feet and hands under the tap and come into the kitchen.’ When I had accomplished these difficult tasks, she would have coffee and tiffin for me in the kitchen. She would have interrupted her gardening to attend to me, and resuming it, go on until late in the evening. From her gardening, after changing into dry clothes, and chewing betel nut and leaf, she came straight for me. She would place an easy chair in the garden for herself and a stool beside it for me, fix up a lamp, and attempt to supplement with her coaching the inadequate education I got in the school. She taught me multiplication; I had to recite the tables up to twelve every day and then all the thirty letters of the Tamil alphabet, followed by Awaiyar’s* sayings. She also made me repeat a few Sanskrit slokas praising Saraswathi, the Goddess of Learning. And then she softly rendered a few classical melodies, whose ragas were to be quickly identified by me. If I fumbled she scolded me unreservedly but rewarded me with a coin if I proved diligent. She was methodical, noting in a small diary my daily lessons to be gone through. The schedule was inflexible and she would rise to give me my dinner only after I had completed it. I felt sleepy within a few minutes of starting my lessons; but she met the situation by keeping at hand a bowl of water and dabbing my eyes with cold water to keep me awake—very much like torturers reviving and refreshing their victims in order to continue the third degree. Grandmotherhood was the wrong vocation for her; she ought to have been a school inspectress. She had an absolute passion to teach and mould a young mind. In later years, after my uncle was married and had children, as they came of a teachable age, she took charge of them one by one. She became more aggressive, too, as at teaching time she always kept beside her long broomsticks of coconut leaf-ribs, and whacked her pupils during the lesson; she made them sit at a measured distance from her, so that they might not be beyond her reach. Her brightest pupil was my cousin Janaki, now a grandmother, who at ten years of age was commended at all family gatherings for her recitations, songs and prayers, but who had had to learn it all the hard way; she was a conscientious pupil and always picked up a choice of

broomsticks along with her books whenever she went up for her lessons (an extension of the non-violence philosophy, by which you not only love your enemy but lend your active cooperation by arming him or her with the right stick). Ours was a Lutheran Mission School—mostly for boarders who were Christian converts. The teachers were all converts, and, towards the few non-Christian students like me, they displayed a lot of hatred. Most of the Christian students also detested us. The scripture classes were mostly devoted to attacking and lampooning the Hindu gods, and violent abuses were heaped on idol- worshippers as a prelude to glorifying Jesus. Among the non-Christians in our class I was the only Brahmin boy, and received special attention; the whole class would turn in my direction when the teacher said that Brahmins claiming to be vegetarians ate fish and meat in secret, in a sneaky way, and were responsible for the soaring price of those commodities. In spite of the uneasy time during the lessons, the Biblical stories themselves enchanted me. Especially the Old Testament seemed to me full of fascinating characters—I loved the Rebeccas and Ruths one came across. When one or the other filled her pitcher from the well and poured water into the mouth of Lazarus or someone racked with thirst, I became thirsty too and longed for a draught of that crystal-clear, icy water. I stood up to be permitted to go out for a drink of water at the backyard tap. When Jesus said, ‘I shall make you fishers of men,’ I felt embarrassed lest they should be reminded of fish and Brahmins again. I bowed my head apprehensively at such moments. What I suffered in the class as a non-Christian was nothing compared to what a Christian missionary suffered when he came to preach at our street corner. If Christian salvation came out of suffering, here was one who must have attained it. A European missionary with a long beard, escorted by a group of Indian converts carrying violins and harmoniums, would station himself modestly at the junction between Vellala Street and Purasawalkam High Road. A gentle concert would begin unobtrusively. A few onlookers stopped by, the priest nodded to everyone in a friendly manner, casting a genial look around, while the musicians rendered a full-throated Biblical hymn over the babble of the street, with its hawkers’ cries and the jutka-drivers’ urging of their lean horses. Urchins sat down in the front row on the ground, and all sorts of men and women assembled. When the preacher was satisfied that he had gathered a good audience, he made a sign to the musicians to stop. His speech, breaking into the abrupt silence that ensued, was delivered in an absolutely literary Tamil, stiff

and formal, culled out of a dictionary, as far away from normal speech as it could be. It was obvious that he had taken a lot of trouble to learn the local language so that he could communicate his message to the heathen masses successfully. But Tamil is a tongue-twister and a demanding language even for Indians from other provinces, the difficulty being that the phonetic value and the orthography are different, and it cannot be successfully uttered by mere learning; it has to be inherited by the ear. I am saying this to explain why the preacher was at first listened to with apparent attention, without any mishap to him. This seemed to encourage him to go on with greater fervour, flourishing his arms and raising his tone to a delirious pitch, his phrases punctuated with ‘Amen’ from his followers. Suddenly, the audience woke up to the fact that the preacher was addressing them as ‘sinners’ (‘Pavigal’ in Tamil) and that he was calling our gods names. He was suggesting that they fling all the stone gods into the moss-covered green tanks in our temples, repent their sins, and seek baptism. For god would forgive all sinners and the Son of God would take on the load of their sins. When the public realized what he was saying, pandemonium broke out. People shouted, commanded him to shut up, moved in on his followers—who fled to save their limbs and instruments. The audience now rained mud and stone on the preacher and smothered him under bundles of wet green grass. Actually, every evening a temporary grass market sprang up on this piece of ground for the benefit of jutka-drivers, and all through the evening hot exchanges went on over the price of each bundle, the grass-selling women shrieking at their customers and trying to match their ribaldry while transacting business. It was impolitic of the preacher to have chosen this spot, but he had his own reasons, apparently. Now people snatched up handfuls of grass and flung them on him, but his voice went on unceasingly through all the travail; lamps lit up by his assistants earlier were snatched away and smashed. The preacher, bedraggled and almost camouflaged with damp grass and water, went through his programme to the last minute as scheduled. Then he suddenly disappeared into the night. One would have thought that the man would never come again. But he did, exactly on the same day a week hence, at the next street corner. The preacher was a foolhardy zealot to have chosen this particular area, as this was one place where the second commandment was totally violated. If you drew a large circle with this spot as the centre, the circumference would enclose several temples where people thronged for worship every evening. Vellala Street itself, though a short stretch, had three temples on it—one for Ganesha, the elephant-faced god, next to it Krishna’s temple, and farther off one for Ponni Amman, the goddess who was the frontier guardian at a time when this part of

Madras was just a village. Where Vellala Street ended, Ponni Amman Street began, with its own row of shops and houses closely packed. If you went up Ponni Amman Street, you reached Lawdor’s Gate (who was this Lawdor? What of the Gate? None in sight now), and it led on to Gangadeswarar Street, which again derived its name from the temple of Iswara (the Shiva who bears the River Ganga on his matted locks), a very large and ancient temple with a thirty-foot doorway, spacious corridors for circumambulation, and a tank for holy baths, public washing of clothes, and periodic drownings. (The tank still claims its quota of human life—one a year.) This temple of Iswara is really a focal point for weddings, funeral obsequies (at the tank), and spontaneous social gatherings, not to mention contact with god. The first nationalist agitation in Madras, in 1916, protesting against something named the Rowlatt Act, was organized here. A procession with patriotic songs and slogan-shouting started from the temple and went round the streets. I joined the procession entranced, and when we returned to the starting point, some enthusiast—the Pankaja Lodge, perhaps— provided refreshments for the tired crowd. When I went home after this patriotic endeavour, I was taken to task by my uncle, who was anti-political and did not want me to be misled. He condemned all rulers, governments, and administrative machinery as satanic and saw no logic in seeking a change of rulers. Beyond the temple at the street corner, there was a little shrine of Ganesha, which was once again a favourite of the school-going public; placed in a position of vantage, this god received a considerable amount of worship, as well as offerings of coconut and coins in the tin money-box fixed to the doorpost. Facing this was the temple of Hanuman, the God of Energy. All these temples attracted the citizens of the area almost every evening. Recently I revisited Purasawalkam and spent a couple of hours viewing the old landmarks, and I found, though multi-storey buildings and new shop fronts and modern villas and the traffic stream have altered the general outlook, that the four or five temples I have mentioned are still solid and unchanged, oil lamps still burning, and the congregations the same as they were half a century or more ago, surviving the street-corner iconoclast as well as the anti-iconoclasts who sought to demolish him with mud and bundles of grass. *An ancient Tamil poetess.

Misguided ‘Guide’ THE LETTER came by air mail from Los Angeles. ‘I am a producer and actor from Bombay,’ it read, ‘I don’t know if my name is familiar to you.’ He was too modest. Millions of young men copied his screen image, walking as he did, slinging a folded coat over the shoulder carelessly, buffing up a lock of hair over the right temple, and assuming that the total effect would make the girls sigh with hopeless longing. My young nephews at home were thrilled at the sight of the handwriting of Dev Anand. The letter went on to say, ‘I was in London and came across your novel The Guide. I am anxious to make it into a film. I can promise you that I will keep to the spirit and quality of your writing. My plans are to make both a Hindi and an English film of this story.’ He explained how he had arranged with an American film producer for collaboration. He also described how he had flown from London to New York in search of me, since someone had told him I lived there, and then across the whole continent before he could discover my address. He was ready to come to Mysore if I should indicate the slightest willingness to consider his proposal. I cabled him an invitation, already catching the fever of hurry characteristic of the film world. He flew from Los Angeles to Bombay to Bangalore, and motored down a hundred miles without losing a moment. A small crowd of autograph-hunters had gathered at the gate of my house in Yadava Giri. He expertly eluded the inquisitive crowd, and we were soon closeted in the dining-room, breakfasting on idli, dosai, and other South Indian delicacies, my nephews attending on the star in a state of elation. The talk was all about The Guide and its cinematic merits. Within an hour we had become so friendly that he could ask without embarrassment, ‘What price will you demand for your story?’ The cheque-book was out and the pen poised over it. I had the impression that if I had suggested that the entire face of the cheque be covered with closely knit figures, he would have obliged me. But I hemmed and hawed, suggested a slight advance, and told him to go ahead. I was sure that if the

picture turned out to be a success he would share with me the glory and the profits. ‘Oh, certainly,’ he affirmed, ‘if the picture, by god’s grace, turns out to be a success, we will be on top of the world, and the sky will be the limit!’ The following months were filled with a sense of importance: Long Distance Calls, Urgent Telegrams, Express Letters, sudden arrivals and departures by plane and car. I received constant summonses to be present here or there. ‘PLEASE COME TO DELHI. SUITE RESERVED AT IMPERIAL HOTEL. URGENTLY NEED YOUR PRESENCE.’ Locking away my novel-in-progress, I fly to Delhi. There is the press conference, with introductions, speeches and overflowing conviviality. The American director explains the unique nature of their present effort: for the first time in the history of Indian moviemaking, they are going to bring out a hundred-per-cent-Indian story, with a hundred-per-cent-Indian cast, and a hundred-per-cent-Indian setting, for an international audience. And mark this: actually in colour-and-wide-screen-first-time-in-the-history-of-this-country. A distinguished group of Americans, headed by the Nobel Prize winner, Pearl Buck, would produce the film. Again and again I heard the phrase: ‘Sky is the limit’, and the repeated assurances: ‘We will make the picture just as Narayan has written it, with his cooperation at every stage.’ Reporters pressed me for a statement. It was impossible to say anything but the pleasantest things in such an atmosphere of overwhelming optimism and good fellowship. Soon we were assembled in Mysore. They wanted to see the exact spots which had inspired me to write The Guide. Could I show them the locations? A photographer, and some others whose business with us I never quite understood, were in the party. We started out in two cars. The American director, Tad Danielewski, explained that he would direct the English version first. He kept discussing with me the finer points of my novel. ‘I guess your hero is a man of impulsive plans? Self-made, given to daydreaming?’ he would ask, and add, before I could muster an answer, ‘Am I not right?’ Of course he had to be right. Once or twice when I attempted to mitigate his impressions, he brushed aside my comments and went on with his own explanation as to what I must have had in mind when I created such-and-such a character. I began to realize that monologue is the privilege of the film-maker, and that it was futile to try butting in with my own observations. But for some obscure reason, they seemed to need my presence, though not my voice. I must be seen and not heard. We drove about 300 miles that day, during the course of which I showed them the river steps and a little shrine overshadowed by a banyan on the banks of Kaveri, which was the actual spot around which I wrote The Guide. As I had

thought, nothing more needed to be done than put the actors there and start the camera. They uttered little cries of joy at finding a ‘set’ so readily available. In the summer, when the river dried up, they could shoot the drought scenes with equal ease. Then I took them to the tiny town of Nanjangud, with its little streets, its shops selling sweets and toys and ribbons, and a pilgrim crowd bathing in the holy waters of the Kabini, which flowed through the town. The crowd was colourful and lively around the temple, and in a few weeks it would increase a hundred fold when people from the surrounding villages arrived to participate in the annual festival—the sort of crowd described in the last pages of my novel. If the film-makers made a note of the date and sent down a cameraman at that time, they could secure the last scene of my novel in an authentic manner and absolutely free of cost. The producer at once passed an order to his assistant to arrange for an outdoor unit to arrive here at the right time. Then we all posed at the portals of the ancient temple, with arms encircling each other’s necks and smiling. This was but the first of innumerable similar scenes in which I found myself posing with the starry folk, crushed in the friendliest embrace. From Nanjangud we drove up mountains and the forests and photographed our radiant smiles against every possible background. It was a fatiguing business on the whole, but the American director claimed that it was nothing to what he was used to. He generally went 5,000 miles in search of locations, exposing hundreds of rolls of film on the way. After inspecting jungles, mountains, village streets, hamlets and huts, we reached the base of Gopalaswami Hill in the afternoon, and drove up the five- mile mud track; the cars had to be pushed up the steep hill after encroaching vegetation had been cleared from the path. This was a part of the forest country where at any bend of the road one could anticipate a tiger or a herd of elephants; but, luckily for us, they were out of view today. At the summit I showed them the original of the ‘Peak House’ in my novel, a bungalow built fifty years ago, with glassed-in verandas affording a view of wildlife at night, and a 2,000-foot drop to a valley beyond. A hundred yards off, a foot-track wound through the undergrowth, leading on to an ancient temple whose walls were crumbling and whose immense timber doors moved on rusty hinges with a groan. Once again I felt that here everything was ready-made for the film. They could shoot in the bright sunlight, and for the indoor scenes they assured me that it would be a simple matter to haul up a generator and lights. Sitting under a banyan tree and consuming sandwiches and lemonade, we discussed and settled the practical aspects of the expedition: where to locate the base camp and where the advance units consisting of engineers, mechanics, and

truck drivers, in charge of the generator and lights. All through the journey back the talk involved schedules and arrangements for shooting the scenes in this part of the country. I was impressed with the ease they displayed, in accepting such mighty logistical tasks. Film executives, it seemed to me, could solve mankind’s problems on a global scale with the casual confidence of demi-gods, if only they could take time off their illusory pursuits and notice the serious aspects of existence. Then came total silence, for many weeks. Finally I discovered that they were busy searching for their locations in northern India. This was a shock. I had never visualized my story in that part of India, where costumes, human types and details of daily life are different. They had settled upon Jaipur and Udaipur in Rajaputana, a thousand miles away from my location for the story. Our next meeting was in Bombay, and I wasted no time in speaking of this problem. ‘My story takes place in south India, in Malgudi, an imaginary town known to thousands of my readers all over the world,’ I explained. ‘It is south India in costume, tone and contents. Although the whole country is one, there are diversities, and one has to be faithful in delineating them. You have to stick to my geography and sociology. Although it is a world of fiction there are certain inner veracities.’ One of them replied: ‘We feel it a privilege to be doing your story.’ This sounded irrelevant as an answer to my statement. We were sitting under a gaudy umbrella beside a blue swimming pool on Juhu beach, where the American party was housed in princely suites in a modern hotel. It was hard to believe that we were in India. Most of our discussions took place somewhat amphibiously, on the edge of the swimming pool, in which the director spent a great deal of his time. This particular discussion was interrupted as a bulky European tourist in swimming briefs fell off the diving plank, hit the bottom and had to be hauled out and rendered first aid. After the atmosphere had cleared, I resumed my speech. They listened with a mixture of respect and condescension, evidently willing to make allowances for an author’s whims. ‘Please remember,’ one of them tried to explain, ‘that we are shooting, for the first time in India, in wide screen and Eastman Color, and we must shoot where there is spectacle. Hence Jaipur.’ ‘In that case,’ I had to ask, ‘why all that strenuous motoring near my home? Why my story at all, if what you need is a picturesque spectacle?’ I was taken aback when their reply came: ‘How do you know that Malgudi is where you think it is?’ Somewhat bewildered, I said, with what I hoped was proper humility, ‘I

suppose I know because I have imagined it, created it and have been writing novel after novel set in the area for the last thirty years.’ ‘We are out to expand the notion of Malgudi,’ one of them explained. ‘Malgudi will be where we place it, in Kashmir, Rajasthan, Bombay, Delhi, even Ceylon.’ I could not share the flexibility of their outlook or the expanse of their vision. It seemed to me that for their purpose a focal point was unnecessary. They appeared to be striving to achieve mere optical effects. I recalled a talk with Satyajit Ray, the great director, some years earlier, when I had met him in Calcutta. He expressed his admiration for The Guide but also his doubts as to whether he could ever capture the tone and atmosphere of its background. He had said, ‘Its roots are so deep in the soil of your part of our country that I doubt if I could do justice to your book, being unfamiliar with its milieu…’ Such misgivings did not bother the American director. I noticed that though he was visiting India for the first time, he never paused to ask what was what in this bewildering country. Finally he solved the whole problem by declaring, ‘Why should we mention where the story takes place? We will avoid the name “Malgudi”. Thereafter the director not only avoided the word Malgudi but fell foul of anyone who uttered that sound. My brother, an artist who has illustrated my stories for twenty-five years, tried to expound his view. At a dinner in his home in Bombay, he mentioned the forbidden word to the director. Malgudi, he explained, meant a little town, not so picturesque as Jaipur, of a neutral shade, with characters wearing dhoti and jibba when they were not bare bodied. The Guide himself was a man of charm, creating history and archaeology out of thin air for his clients, and to provide him with solid, concrete monuments to talk about would go against the grain of the tale. The director listened and firmly said, ‘There is no Malgudi, and that is all there is to it.’ But my brother persisted. I became concerned that the controversy threatened to spoil our dinner. The director replied, in a sad tone, that they could as well have planned a picture for black and white and narrow screen if all one wanted was what he contemptuously termed a ‘Festival Film’, while he was planning a million-dollar spectacle to open simultaneously in 2,000 theatres in America. I was getting used to arguments every day over details. My story is about a dancer in a small town, an exponent of the strictly classical tradition of South Indian Bharat Natyam. The film-makers felt this was inadequate. They therefore engaged an expensive, popular dance director with a troupe of a hundred or more dancers, and converted my heroine’s performances into an

extravaganza in delirious, fruity colours and costumes. Their dancer was constantly travelling hither and thither in an Air India Boeing, no matter how short the distance to be covered. The moviegoer, too, I began to realize, would be whisked all over India. Although he would see none of the countryside in which the novel was set, he would see the latest US Embassy building in New Delhi, Parliament House, the Ashoka Hotel, the Lake Palace, Elephanta Caves and what-not. Unity of place seemed an unknown concept for a film-maker. (Later Mrs Indira Gandhi, whom I met after she had seen a special showing of the film, asked, ‘Why should they have dragged the story all over as if it were a travelogue, instead of containing themselves to the simple background of your book?’ She added as an afterthought, and in what seemed to me an understatement: ‘Perhaps they have other considerations.’) The cooperation of many persons was needed in the course of the film- making, and anyone whose help was requested had to be given a copy of The Guide. Thus there occurred a shortage, and an inevitable black market, in copies of the book. A production executive searched the bookshops in Bombay, and cornered all the available copies at any price. He could usually be seen going about like a scholar with a bundle of books under his arm. I was also intrigued by the intense study and pencil-marking that the director was making on his copy of the book; it was as if he were studying it for a doctoral thesis. Not until I had a chance to read his ‘treatment’ did I understand what all his pencilling meant: he had been marking off passages and portions that were to be avoided in the film. When the script came, I read through it with mixed feelings. The director answered my complaints with, ‘I have only exteriorized what you have expressed. It is all in your book.’ ‘In which part of my book?’ I would ask without any hope of an answer. Or he would say, ‘I could give you two hundred reasons why this change should be so.’ I did not feel up to hearing them all. If I still proved truculent he would explain away, ‘This is only a first draft. We could make any change you want in the final screenplay.’ The screenplay was finally presented to me with a great flourish and expression of fraternal sentiments at a hotel in Bangalore. But I learned at this time that they had already started shooting and had even completed a number of scenes. Whenever I expressed my views, the answer would be either, ‘Oh, it will be rectified in the editing,’ or, ‘We will deal with it when we decide about the retakes. But please wait until we have a chance to see the rushes.’ By now a bewildering number of hands were behind the scenes, at laboratories, workshops, carpentries, editing rooms and so forth. It was impossible to keep

track of what was going on, or get hold of anyone with a final say. Soon I trained myself to give up all attempts to connect the film with the book of which I happened to be the author. But I was not sufficiently braced for the shock that came the day when the director insisted upon the production of two tigers to fight and destroy each other over a spotted deer. He wished to establish the destructive animality of two men clashing over one woman: my heroine’s husband and lover fighting over her. The director intended a tiger fight to portray depths of symbolism. It struck me as obvious. Moreover it was not in the story. But he asserted that it was; evidently I had intended the scene without realizing it. The Indian producer, who was financing the project, groaned at the thought of the tigers. He begged me privately, ‘Please do something about it. We have no time for tigers; and it will cost a hell of a lot to hire them, just for a passing fancy.’ I spoke to the director again, but he was insistent. No tiger, no film, and two tigers or none. Scouts were sent out through the length and breadth of India to explore the tiger possibilities. They returned to report that only one tiger was available. It belonged to a circus and the circus owner would under no circumstance consent to have the tiger injured or killed. The director decreed, ‘I want the beast to die, otherwise the scene will have no meaning.’ They finally found a man in Madras, living in the heart of the city with a full-grown Bengal tiger which he occasionally lent for jungle pictures, after sewing its lips and pulling out its claws. The director examined a photograph of the tiger, in order to satisfy himself that they were not trying to palm off a pi-dog in tiger clothing, and signed it up. Since a second tiger was not available, he had to settle for its fighting a leopard. It was an easier matter to find a deer for the sacrifice. What they termed a ‘second unit’ was dispatched to Madras to shoot the sequence. Ten days later the unit returned, looking forlorn. The tiger had shrunk at the sight of the leopard, and the leopard had shown no inclination to maul the deer, whose cries of fright had been so heart-rending that they had paralysed the technicians. By prodding, kicking and irritating the animals, they had succeeded in producing a spectacle gory enough to make them retch. ‘The deer was actually lifted and fed into the jaws of the other two,’ said an assistant cameraman. (This shot passes on the screen, in the finished film, in the winking of an eye, as a bloody smudge, to the accompaniment of a lot of wild uproar.) Presently another crisis developed. The director wanted the hero to kiss the heroine, who of course rejected the suggestion as unbecoming an Indian woman. The director was distraught. The hero, for his part, was willing to obey the

director, but he was helpless, since kissing is a cooperative effort. The American director realized that it is against Indian custom to kiss in public; but he insisted that the public in his country would boo if they missed the kiss. I am told that the heroine replied: ‘There is enough kissing in your country at all times and places, off and on the screen, and your public, I am sure, will flock to a picture where, for a change, no kissing is shown.’ She stood firm. Finally, the required situation was apparently faked by tricky editing. Next: trouble at the governmental level. A representation was made to the Ministry dealing with films, by an influential group, that The Guide glorified adultery, and hence was not fit to be presented as a film, since it might degrade Indian womanhood. The dancer in my story, to hear their arguments, has no justification for preferring Raju the Guide to her legally-wedded husband. The Ministry summoned the movie principals to Delhi and asked them to explain how they proposed to meet the situation. They promised to revise the film script to the Ministry’s satisfaction. In my story the dancer’s husband is a preoccupied archaeologist who has no time or inclination for marital life and is not interested in her artistic aspirations. Raju the Guide exploits the situation and weans her away from her husband. That is all there is to it—in my story. But now a justification had to be found for adultery. So the archaeological husband was converted into a drunkard and womanizer who kicks out his wife when he discovers that another man has watched her dance in her room and has spoken encouragingly to her. I knew nothing about this drastic change of my characters until I saw the ‘rushes’ some months later. This was the point at which I lamented most over my naiveté the contract that I had signed in blind faith, in the intoxication of cheques, bonhomie, and back-slapping, empowered them to do whatever they pleased with my story, and I had no recourse. Near the end of the project I made another discovery: the extent to which movie producers will go to publicize a film. The excessive affability to pressmen, the entertaining of VIPs, the button-holing of ministers and officials in authority, the extravagant advertising campaigns, seemed to me to drain off money, energy and ingenuity that might be reserved for the creation of an honest and sensible product. On one occasion Lord Mountbatten was passing through India, and someone was seized with the sudden idea that he could help make a success of the picture. A banquet was held at Raj Bhavan in his honour, and the Governor of Bombay, Mrs Vijayalakshmi Pandit, was kind enough to invite us to it. I was at home in Mysore as Operation Mountbatten was launched, so telegrams and